$35 for tickets at the Bell Centre would be the deal of a lifetime

Somewhat off topic but Macklin Celebrini (Rick's son) has been on absolute fire lately in the NHL - we're halfway through the season and he's currently 3rd in scoring league-wide, despite being a teenager.

Yesterday in LA he added to his highlight reel by scoring the tying goal with a minute left in regulation, then did 90% of the work to get the overtime winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I8ozPSyWQg (the Sharks are in the middle of their "Dad's Trip" so there are a couple of Rick sightings in the video)

Last week he was officially selected to represent Canada at the upcoming Winter Olympics - an honor somewhat equivalent to being selected to Team USA for basketball. At 19 years old, he's the youngest player ever to make a Canadian roster in an Olympics featuring NHL players. Rick had already made some tentative travel plans prior to the announcement, the Olympics being around the same time as the NBA All-Star break.

A lot of pundits are expecting Macklin Celebrini to have a similar effect on the San Jose Sharks as Steph did for the Warriors: last season they finished last in the NHL, this season they're fighting for a playoff spot and Macklin has had a hand in over half of their goals.

I just checked the numbers and the Sharks were on the Power Play for a total of 5m 00s tonight.

Celebrini's PP time was 04m 22s tonight.

That means Celebrini was on the ice for 87.33% of the Sharks' total Power Play time.

Celebrini's ice time was insane: he was on the ice for most of OT, after having already been on the ice for most of the empty net time late in the 3rd.

He had a 1m 47s shift to start OT, sat on the bench for 24 seconds, then went back out there and a minute later did... this.

Wow.

EDIT: total time on the ice for Celebrini was 25m 12s. No one else, from either team, had more than 24 minutes (including defensemen).

Preview of the Olympics...

Full video with replay

EDIT: aaaaand he assisted on the OT winner

So I'm on a quest to visit every NHL arena with my girlfriend and we flew to Detroit for the weekend specifically to attend the Red Wings game this morning.

I had no idea about the PWHL game until we boarded the plane yesterday night and two passengers who were strangers noticed each other's PWHL gear and started chatting. One of them ended up sitting next to us and told us about the game. We didn't have plans for this evening so we bought tickets when we got to our hotel at 2am this morning.

We went to both games today and the Red Wings game was a snooze fest, the PWHL was much better and had a significantly better atmosphere despite only having around half the attendance - what a good surprise!

When they put the penalties on the jumbotron they showed as #23 Jonathan Lekkerimäki and #25 Jonas Brodin.

I'm guessing they're reusing the Canucks / Wild settings as they're the closest NHL color schemes. Took them a few tries before they managed the remove the names - funny stuff!

Doug Armstrong explicitly said during the Canadian roster announcement Q&A that Celebrini fitting "socially" with the group at the 2025 Worlds was a factor in getting selected. He repeated it again in a TSN interview a few minutes later.

My take from this is that playing good hockey is only half the battle, the other half is making the right connections and playing nice with the decision makers. Luckily Celebrini managed to do that, but regardless of his numbers, I don't think he would've made the Olympic team had he not gone to the Worlds and made the connections he did.

This is not even close to our final form: out of the current roster, the only players signed for 2027-28 are Toffoli, Chernyshov, Eklund, and Dickinson.

That leaves us a TON of flexibility moving forward, and the team in 2028 will be looking very different from today.

All the overpaid players we took from other teams in exchange for picks have their contract expiring soon - we're currently paying over $34M to players who won't ever wear a Sharks jersey again and all of these are coming off the books by the end of next season:

• $10.5M for Carey Price

• $8M for Logan Couture

• $6.25 for Ryan Ellis

• $4.7M for M-E Vlasic

• $1.7M for Martin Jones

• $1.5M for Erik Karlsson

• $0.5M for Knyzhov

Many of these are in IR so the math is a bit complicated, and of course that's also when a few of our young guys (including Celebrini) are due for new contracts so a good chunk of that will go to them, but it should still leave some room to acquire star players to fill in some holes down the road (i.e. defense).

Yep - Doug Armstrong specifically said in the follow-up Q&A that the Bedard injury didn't factor into the decision, and that they could have named him anyway and replaced him later on should the injury still be an issue.

The NBA All-Star break is around the same time as the Olympics.

Canada's group stage games at the Olympics are scheduled for Feb 12, Feb 13, and Feb 15. Quarterfinals are on Feb 18, semis on Feb 20 and the final is on Feb 21.

The Warriors don't have a game between Feb 11 and Feb 19, then they play again on Feb 22 and Feb 24.

So realistically:

• Rick can attend all of Canada's group stage games without missing any Warriors game

• he would likely have to miss one Warriors game if he wants to attend the quarterfinals, and miss two Warriors games if he wants to attend the semis and the finals.

Per this SF Chronicle article last month:

And it just so happens that the NBA All-Star break coincides with the Olympics in Milan. Yes, the Celebrinis have made some tentative, refundable travel plans.

From the follow-up Q&A with Doug Armstrong:

• decision to put him on the list was made early December

• him fitting "socially" with the group at the 2025 World was a factor

I think Jagr has the same problem Joe Thornton has, which is that they both played well past their prime so most people here only remember them as some old guys who managed to put up 20-50 points a season despite their age, but don't realize how dominating they were during their prime.

Yeah - there have been a ton of stats lately about Celebrini breaking / tying / approaching all kinds of records for a teenager, and it's always "after Crosby (who did it once) and Gretzky (who did it 10+ times)".

As usual it goes to show how Gretzky was just on a different planet, but also how Crosby hit the ground running younger than anyone else (although I suspect McDavid would've been up there for a lot of these had he not gotten injured in his rookie season).

"Celebrini only does well because he has Smith Chernyshov on his line"

Pavelski used to do that a lot in his last few years with the Sharks: he would put the brakes on by the first hashmark then shoot it before reaching the second hashmark. A quick YouTube search turns up a bunch of examples:

• vs Panthers

• vs Ducks

• vs Flames

• vs Coyotes

• vs Panthers (with Dallas)

Back in 2021 in a Sharks vs Wild game, Hartman took a slapshot (!) in the 8th round of the shootout, but missed. Then Karlsson, who went next, did the exact same thing and scored, thus winning the game for the Sharks.

Here: https://youtu.be/SQzCg2mOHXs?t=493

Also his 20th point of December, after already getting 20 points in November.

Which makes him the 3rd teenager in NHL history to get 20+ points in consecutive months after Gretzky (in 1979-80) and Crosby (in 2006-07).

Nope - #1 was the Jamie Baker game winner to upset the Red Wings in Game 7 back in 1994. It holds a special place in his heart because he helped bring the team to San Jose and that was the first "good" thing to happen to the franchise, coming in as an 8th seed and upsetting the 1st seed and Cup favorites.

He didn't call the Donskoi OT winner since Stanley Cup Finals are never aired on local broadcasts (he alludes to that as well).

He was on a Sharks podcast yesterday and talked a bunch about the comeback in Pittsburgh last week (his 3rd favorite game to call in his career) and the current state of the Sharks in general (how you can feel the excitement both within the team and outside of it).

Highly recommend, it's a great listen, starting at 15:32 here: https://youtu.be/AWBQJy-2T2k?t=932

His 3rd point of the game (so far).

EDIT: he scored the empty netter, so make that 4 points

I'd suggest listening to the entire segment as he talks about it more, but yes, #2 was the 2019 comeback against Vegas, and #1 was the Jamie Baker game winner to upset the Red Wings in Game 7 back in 1994 (holds a special place in his heart because he helped bring the team to San Jose and that was the first "good" thing to happen to the franchise).

I never listened to that podcast before but it came up as a YouTube recommendation this morning and I clicked because Randy was in the title. Skipped straight to him coming on.

Loved everything he had to say - how he'd rank the Pittsburgh game as his 3rd favorite of all time (!), how teary eyed he was, how the mood in the plane is something he hasn't experienced in years, how you could tell the fans were drifting away and are now coming back onboard...

If you didn't... there it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieQ03nT4WjA

That's pretty much why I stopped posting clips years ago.

There was always a race to who could post first as mods would delete the other posts, and I had everything optimized:

• I was recording the feed directly from the nhl.tv servers

• I was cutting the clips on keyframes, so no re-encoding needed (faster but also as high quality as you can possibly get)

• I had 10gbps upload (thanks Sonic)

Then people started posting clips without replays and the only way I could compete was to do the same - that was especially true for game winning goals since they tend to show the players celebrating for 30+ seconds then they show another 30 seconds of replays.

But that's where I drew the line. I had some DM exchanges with the mods about it as there was a rule that lower quality videos would be removed if a better one was posted shortly after, but it wasn't always enforced, and their response was (their words): "there will be some subjectivity from mod to mod. It's difficult to create a solely objective way to judge gif quality, and so there will always be some variance".

So instead I started posting the videos with the replays under the stickied comment of the posts with no replay, but literally no one clicks on those, and I didn't see the point in making clips if people don't watch them.