Preview/Lines #67: Can Celebrini-Bedard Be Next Crosby-Ovechkin?

For the first time, Macklin Celebrini will play against Connor Bedard.

It’s the 2024 No. 1 pick versus the 2023, two North Vancouver boys who skated with each other when they were kids at North Shore Winter Club…and the NHL’s next great star rivalry?

“I don’t know if it’ll be the Crosby-Ovechkin,” San Jose Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky said, “but it’ll be probably in that ballpark.”

Sidney Crosby-Alex Ovechkin has been must-see TV for two decades, since Crosby was the 2005 first-overall pick and Ovechkin was the 2004 first-overall.

But like Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins and Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals, both Celebrini’s San Jose Sharks and Bedard’s Chicago Blackhawks have a ways to go before they see each other in a meaningful game.

For the third-consecutive season, San Jose and Chicago are vying for the No. 1 pick.

The 2024 Calder Trophy winner, in his second season in the cellar, had this advice for the 2025 Calder front-runner.

“As competitors, you get so focused on the results, how you’re playing, how your team’s doing. I know he has super-high expectations for himself, personally and for his teams, it can obviously get frustrating,” Bedard said, of all the losing that he and Celebrini have endured. “For me, I’m just trying to focus on process. You want to win, but just trying to get better each and every game.”

It took Crosby’s second season and Ovechkin’s third— both made their NHL debuts in 2005-06 — before their teams reached the playoffs. Pittsburgh-Washington’s first playoff clash wasn’t until 2009.

“Them and us, we have a lot of ways to go before it’s a high, high-level rivalry where we’re both in a playoff spot and maybe we face each other in the playoffs,” Celebrini said. “Both of our franchises need a little bit of time to get there.”

Hopefully, both the Sharks and Blackhawks get there. The pieces are there, between franchise centers Celebrini and Bedard, top-flight young goalies Yaroslav Askarov and Spencer Knight, and future star running mates like Will Smith and Artyom Levshunov.

But for now, Celebrini and Bedard just have praise for each other.

“He’s always been a superstar, whenever we were younger. He’s always been the kid you see now,” Celebrini said of Bedard, who he skated with when he was five or six, before they went on different teams.

Celebrini said that Bedard gave him his phone number this past summer, if he needed advice, though he hasn’t sought him out yet.

“His playmaking is unbelievable. I see that a lot in the summers when I skate with him,” Celebrini said of Bedard. “The way he sees the ice I think doesn’t get appreciated as much. Also, his ability to strip pucks from guys. He has such a long stick, and he knows how to use it.”

“He’s a dynamic player. Coming in as an 18-year-old, it’s tough, it’s a good league,” Bedard said of Celebrini. “He’s always hounding pucks and he’s always moving and he’s just hard to play against. I think that’s impressive from an offensive player who’s so gifted…That’s something that people might not notice as much is how hard he is on pucks. He’s always getting in the way and creating stuff off the puck.”

“It’s going to be cool,” Celebrini said of tonight’s match-up.

San Jose Sharks (17-40-9)

It’s the Race for Schaef, as the two worst teams take each other on in a battle for Draft Lottery position.

Alexandar Georgiev will start, his sixth-straight start.

“We’ll see. We’re taking it one day at a time,” Warsofsky said, about getting prospect Georgi Romanov a start soon.

He did compliment Romanov’s growth since the Sharks signed him in the summer of 2023: “Like his talent, his size, improved a lot, in the last year and a half.

Noah Gregor will make his Sharks “debut”, coming in for Carl Grundstrom.

The Sharks could line up like this:

Eklund-Celebrini-Toffoli
Graf-Wennberg-Smith
Kovalenko-Dellandrea-Kostin
Gregor-Giles-Goodrow

Ferraro-Mukhamadullin
Vlasic-Liljegren
Schuldt-Desharnais

Georgiev

Chicago Blackhawks (20-36-9)

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Where To Watch

Puck drop between the San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks is 7:30 PM PT at SAP Center. Watch it live on NBC Sports California. Listen to it on the Sharks Audio Network.