Recently, Macklin Celebrini decided to return to the San Jose Sharks on a massive deal. However, it wasn't exactly long-term, which could set the stage for something record-breaking in the future. Celebrini, 20, was drafted first overall in the 2024 NHL draft and has become one of the best players in the NHL. The San Jose Sharks will likely try not to allow their superstar to hit free agency in the future, but that may be hard considering he'll only be 25 and be potentially the best player in the NHL.
A free agency with Celebrini could be record-breaking
Celebrini, at 20, has already become a top-5 player in the NHL. In the 2025-26 season, Celebrini broke out with 45 goals and 70 assists, which was good enough for the fourth-best in the NHL with 115 points. Simply put, the youngster is already the kind of offensive force that someone like Connor McDavid and Nathan McKinnon are. The Sharks knew that they needed to retain Celebrini at any cost and re-signed the superstar to a five-year, $18.8M AAV deal. This deal makes Celebrini the highest-paid player in the NHL, just a few weeks after the 21-year-old Leo Carlsson got a massive deal from the Anaheim Ducks. This deal gives the Sharks a nice sigh of relief for now, even with the massive AAV, but it sets something up in the future.
In five years, the superstar will only be 25 years old and be an unrestricted free agent. This five-year deal could have been a masterclass by Celebrini, securing a record-breaking contract that could eclipse 20 million AAV. For example, in MLB, a superstar named Juan Soto became a free agent at 25. Without a salary cap, this led to the biggest deal in sports history, as Soto secured a 15-year, $765M deal that could reach over $ 800 M in the future. In the NHL, having a salary will limit a lot of teams, but in terms of what happened for Soto, in which multiple teams got more and more crazy with their offers, the same thing could happen with Celebrini.
Teams could very well offer the max salary, trying to secure a player who could be the best in the NHL in five years. One of those teams could be the Sharks, but even then, they have to deal with a bad salary situation if they want Celebrini. The Utah Mammoth, for example, are paying Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther a combined 17 million for the next seven years. It should definitely be noted, though, that a free agency with Celebrini could be insane.
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