How Macklin Celebrini became top prospect

Even before he became the presumptive first overall NHL Draft pick — and potential San Jose Shark — Macklin Celebrini loved scoring goals.

Not just on the ice, either. As a striker, Celebrini would rip up soccer pitches around his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. Both of his parents played college soccer, and he looked to be next in line. To this day, he admits he was naturally more gifted at soccer than hockey.

It’s probably no coincidence that at the same time Celebrini and his siblings were rising through the youth sports machine, their dad Rick — the Warriors’ director of sports medicine and performance since 2018 — was extolling the virtues of cross-sport training.

So Rick found time to coach Macklin and his older son, Aiden, in youth soccer.

“He could’ve been even a better soccer player than he (is) a hockey player,” Aiden said.

But in a hockey-crazed country, Celebrini, now 17, chose the ice. His love for scoring goals didn’t fade; he kept finding the net as a young kid in Canada, for the Jr. Sharks after his family moved to the Bay Area, and this past year at Boston University, where he became the youngest winner of the Hobey Baker Award — the Heisman Trophy of college hockey.

The center could continue doing so with the moribund Sharks, who as this season’s worst team, have a league-best 25 percent chance of winning Tuesday’s NHL Draft Lottery. Their prize would be Celebrini, who has been on their radar for years thanks to his Bay Area sporting ties.

To some degree, any elite athlete’s story is one of nature versus nurture. In Celebrini’s rise to this moment, his spectrum is particularly noteworthy. A determined competitor, he has blended intrinsic skill with squeezing every bit of potential out of the rare opportunities afforded to him by his father’s background.

“I think it’s been massive for me,” Celebrini told this news organization. “Everything from injury prevention to different things to work on and understanding how an athlete works, the tolerance of an athlete — all that knowledge kind of displayed onto us, it all helped massively in our development.”

Rick isn’t a mad scientist. He never forced any of his children to play sports.

But here they are, elite athletes anyway: Macklin soon the top pick, Aiden already drafted by the Canucks, Charlize, 15, one of the top Canadian players her age, and RJ, the youngest with perhaps the most potential in the rink.

“It’s been around them their whole lives,” Rick said, “so I think they’ve just naturally gravitated to (sports).”

As a toddler, Macklin would hit whiffle balls out of his grandparents’ yard both as a lefty and right-handed hitter. As Rick tells it, the young Macklin boasted then that “someday, people are going to watch me do this.”

At around 3 years old, Macklin taught himself how to skate after watching his older brother at a “cookie monster” practice — a hockey development program for little kids. The son of two collegiate athletes, he had innate ability.

An intangible drive, too, was also always there. During one of his first times on the ice in the cookie monster program, he lost the puck in front of the goal and slipped and fell behind the net. An opponent went for a breakaway, only for Macklin to catch him and knock it away with a dive on his belly.

“He could barely skate, but he just kind of chased the kid down,” Rick said, noting that the “pretty accomplished hockey coach” in charge said he could not recall seeing effort like that before.

Much else was taught, though, by one of North America’s brightest sports medicine minds, including cross-sport exposure.

“I feel like soccer helped me in so many ways, even ways I didn’t really think about,” Macklin told this news organization. “Vision or spacing, just problem-solving. There’s so many benefits to playing different sports.”

After getting his PhD in physical therapy at the University of British Columbia and playing pro soccer, Rick worked three Winter Olympics — first as a physiotherapist for Canada’s Alpine Ski Team and then as the 2010 games’ chief therapist and medical manager. He became the Vancouver Whitecaps’ team physiotherapist and co-founded the Fortius Institute, where he worked with close friend Steve Nash. In 2018, he joined the Warriors and soon became one of the most respected members of the organization.

Rick brought his work home with him, too. When his kids were little, he’d create obstacle courses for them on playgrounds, “gamifying” physical activity. During a flight delay at the Orlando airport after a trip to Disney World, he set up a sprinting circuit for the kids in the terminal.

“You’re really trying to tease out multi-directional movement and cutting, change of direction, ducking under things and jumping over things,” Rick said.

Part of Rick’s PhD research was in motor skill acquisition. In layman’s terms: how to optimize movement. In Rick’s terms: building a young athlete’s “physical literacy.”

On beach vacations in Maui, Rick would lead his kids through sprints and hops in the sand. In another game, Rick would kick a soccer ball and have Macklin and Aiden race to retrieve it, critiquing their strides.

The Celebrini family’s unofficial motto is “What did you do today to get better?”

For Macklin, that development has come to a head at the cusp of stardom. As the youngest player in college hockey, he totaled 64 points on 32 goals and 32 assists — the only one this season to go 30/30.

During the draft lottery, Macklin will be in Prague, representing Canada for the first time at the men’s level, in the IIHF Men’s World Championship. He’ll play alongside Connor Bedard, last year’s top pick who had high praise for him.

“He’s a special player and what he’s doing this year is remarkable. I don’t know if it’s ever been done at his age,” Bedard said.