Matt Johnson
The National Hockey League’s Hart Memorial Trophy is awarded each season to the player deemed to be the most valuable to his team in the NHL. This season, the pick should be San Jose Sharks‘ teenage phenom Macklin Celebrini.
As we near the end of the 2025-26 NHL regular season, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov are the Hart Trophy favorites. While they are both certainly deserving this year, the most valuable player to his team in hockey in 2026 played in San Jose.
Let’s dive into our case for why Celebrini should win the Hart Trophy.
Macklin Celebrini’s Historic Season Merits a Historic Trophy
In professional sports, narrative and history shape MVP voting. We’ve seen it in the NBA, when Russell Westbrook won MVP after averaging a triple-double on an Oklahoma City Thunder team that finished sixth in its conference. Miguel Cabrera won AL MVP in 2012 when he hit for the Triple Crown, and NFL MVP has been awarded based on narratives in the past.
Narrative and NHL history should also have an influence on Hart Trophy voting. This season, Celebrini became only the sixth teenager in history to record 100-plus points in a season, joining all-time greats like Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Mario Lemieux, Dale Hawerchuk, and Jimmy Carson. Earlier this season, he joined Lemieux, Gretzky, and Crosby as the fourth teenager in NHL history with 40-plus points in 27 or fewer games.
The 19-year-old is also poised to break Gretzky’s NHL record for the highest percentage of points on his team’s goals scored as a teenager. Celebrini is also on pace for the third-highest points total by a teenager in NHL history behind only Crosby and Gretzky. Furthermore, he’s set to break San Jose’s single-season points record (Joe Thornton, 114).
From a narrative perspective, it seems fitting to cap off a historic season with Celebrini joining Gretzky and Crosby as the only teenagers in NHL history to win the Hart Trophy.
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The Celebrini Effect: Most Valuable Player in Hockey
The very definition of the Hart Trophy defines what Celebrini is doing this season in San Jose. Through 76 games, the Sharks have scored 234 goals, with Celebrini scoring a point on 45.7 percent of them. For comparison, Kucherov has recorded a point on 45.2 percent of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s 279 goals, and MacKinnon has a point on 42.5 percent of the Colorado Avalanche’s 287 goals.
Taking things a step further, let’s compare how each Hart Trophy candidate’s scoring stacks up to their teammates’. Kucherov boasts a 40-point advantage over Tampa Bay’s second-highest points total (Jake Guentzel, 86) and the Lightning have four players with 60-plus points this season. In Colorado, MacKinnon has 28 more points than teammate Martin Necas and the Avalanche have four skaters with 60-plus points. Meanwhile, Celebrini has a 52-point advantage over his next closest teammate (Will Smith, 55) and he is the only player on the Sharks’ roster to score 60-plus points this season.
One other stat to capture Celebrini’s value: the Sharks have a 2-15-3 record in games where Celebrini doesn’t record a point, and they are 35-17-4 when he records a point. In games where Celebrini scores multiple points, San Jose is 24-3-1. This team is at the very bottom of the NHL standings without him.
San Jose Sharks’ Year-to-Year Improvement
Heading into the 2025-26 NHL season, the Sharks had a projected over/under point total of 70.5, with ESPN projecting them to finish last in the Pacific Division. The team was also in the bottom five of consensus NHL power rankings. Entering play on April 7, San Jose is 2 points out of the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference, having scored 29 more points than it did last season thanks to 17 more wins. That was unthinkable back in October, especially after the team started the season 0-4-2. This is still one of the youngest teams in hockey and it’s being carried by a teenager. This is all just another reason why Celebrini deserves to win the Hart Memorial Trophy.
A Season for the Ages: Celebrini Deserves the Hart Memorial Trophy
The Hart Trophy is a regular-season award; it’s a way of looking back years from now to remember a defining moment from that year. MacKinnon and Kucherov are each having outstanding seasons, but what the hockey world will remember even more is seeing a 19-year-old Celebrini put himself in the same company as the all-time greats with a historic season that turned the rebuilding Sharks into a playoff contender. Narrative matters here, and it’s impossible to ignore how valuable Celebrini has been to San Jose this season. If the Hart Memorial Trophy is truly meant to be awarded “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team,” that is Celebrini.
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