BOSTON -- There is a world in which Macklin Celebrini would have been playing in Boston on Wednesday night, not on Thursday, a world in which his jersey would still have said Boston University, not San Jose.
This is not that world.
Instead, it's been nearly two years since Celebrini last donned a Terriers jersey, since he last made his home in Boston, a time in which he made his debut for the San Jose Sharks and won a silver medal with Team Canada at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 before making his current push for the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player.
"It's gone by fast, for sure," Celebrini said. "Feels like yesterday I was here. To say it's been two years, it's gone by really, really fast."
So rather than Celebrini playing at Agganis Arena against the University of Vermont in the opening round of the Hockey East Tournament, he was set to watch his brother Aiden take the ice from the stands. Instead, the 19-year-old center will be playing the following night for the Sharks against the Boston Bruins, with another tournament on his mind: the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
"It's the last little stretch," he said Wednesday. "It's exciting. We're still in it. We had a pretty good homestand there -- obviously a tough one last night [in a 6-3 loss at the Buffalo Sabres] -- but I think we've just got to get back on track."
They can start against the Bruins, owners of 13 straight wins at home -- "We definitely want to snap that streak," forward Will Smith said -- at TD Garden on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSCA, NESN, SNP, SNE), in a matchup of teams fighting to finish the season with a spot in the playoffs.
The Sharks, who had the fewest points in the NHL last season (52), have 66 this season, one point behind the Seattle Kraken for the second wild card in the Western Conference, with the Kraken tied in points with the Los Angeles Kings. The Sharks (30-26-6) have a game in hand on the Kraken (29-25-9) and two on the Kings (26-23-15).
It's not necessarily where they were expected to be.
"If someone would have told you in October at the start of training camp we'd be one point out of a playoff spot, March [11], they probably wouldn't believe it," San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky said. "We're going to enjoy this grind and this journey that we're on together.
"We've got to do it as a team. It can't just be four or five guys. We're going to do it together and enjoy it. Sometimes you get really good experiences through failure. We kind of learned that lesson a little bit last night with a really good Buffalo team. We've got to turn the page and move on. It's a new day, the sun came up, we've got to get back to work and get ready for a good Boston team."
But while the Sharks know that they're a team, that they have to do it as a team, it all starts with Celebrini, who has hit 90 points (33 goals, 57 assists) in 62 games this season, double the points of Smith (45 points; 19 goals, 26 assists in 49 games), who is second on San Jose.
It was just a month ago when Celebrini and the rest of Team Canada headed to the Milano Cortina Games, two weeks of Olympic hockey in which Celebrini soaked up all the wisdom and knowledge he could from players whose winning and experience he could only imagine, finishing with a tournament-high five goals in six games.
Asked what he learned, Celebrini said, "Playing over there, you were around some of the best winners that have ever played the game and some of the best coaches in the League, and the way that they approach it, the way that the guys have bought into winning hockey, and the way you need to play to win. Obviously no team in the NHL is like that team, but I think just that mindset and some of those lessons that I learned."
It's something he's brought back to the Sharks, something he hopes can help them in their quest to take another step.
But that isn't all he brought back.
"Playing with the best of the best, I think he found patience in his game at times," Warsofsky said, noting Celebrini's line with Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon as formative in that. "Sometimes it's OK not to have great plays happen every shift, or try to make things happen every shift, so I think that's probably the biggest thing, is the patience that you need to play with throughout the game."
It's clear that Celebrini is maturing, clear that the Sharks are maturing, clear that there is so much good ahead of this team. It was something that the Sharks discussed before their current road trip, a gauntlet that goes from Buffalo and Boston to Montreal, Ottawa and Edmonton, talking about the importance of the race they now find themselves in, the importance of making the most of that -- for now and for the future.
They've seen that in the consistency they've found, in the ways they've managed to pick up points they might previously have lost. They've seen it in a commitment to protecting the inside of the ice, to being hard to play against, to finishing.
"We're obviously trying to make it. We're trying to make as good of a push as we can and do everything we can to win some games here and get enough points to get the job done," Celebrini said.
"But either way this is great for our group. Just learning to be in this situation in the first place -- last year, we weren't even close. In January, we were already out of it. So I think just being in it this late in the year -- I mean, we have 20 games, we're one point out, you never know what's going to happen. It's good for our group to be in the situation."
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