Macklin Celebrini Just Won IIHF Player of the Year. The Vote Wasn’t Close.

Macklin Celebrini is 20 years old, and he just made the IIHF’s Player of the Year vote look like a mismatch. The San Jose Sharks forward took home the award Thursday with 40.8 percent of the vote — exactly double what runner-up Connor Hellebuyck got. Sebastian Aho finished third at 14.3 percent, and Connor McDavid landed fourth.

The voting panel included nearly 200 media members and IIHF representatives. So it wasn’t some small sample size fluke. Celebrini crushed it.

This award goes to the player who shows exceptional skill, determination, team success, and sporting character — but the catch is you have to play in at least one IIHF tournament and compete in your country’s top domestic league. Celebrini did both, and he made the decision easy.

Olympics and Worlds: Two tournaments, one dominant run

At the 2026 Winter Olympics, Celebrini led the tournament in goals with five and finished second in scoring with 10 points in six games. Only McDavid had more points (13). Canada made it to the gold medal game but lost 3-2 in overtime to the United States. Celebrini walked away with a silver medal and a spot on the Olympic All-Star Team. He also became the youngest Canadian ever to make the men’s Olympic roster.

Then he went to the IIHF World Championship and captained Canada for the first time. In 10 games, he put up 14 points (six goals, eight assists), finished second in tournament scoring, and tied for third in goals. He was the highest-scoring under-20 player at the event, won the IIHF Directorate Best Forward award, and made the All-Star Team again. Canada finished fourth, but Celebrini wasn’t the reason why.

Add it all up: 11 goals and 24 points in 16 IIHF games this season. That’s absurd for any player, let alone a teenager.

His NHL season was even more ridiculous

Celebrini was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft. Not much pressure there. He responded with 115 points — 45 goals, 70 assists — in 82 games, which put him fourth in league scoring. He set a single-season franchise record for the Sharks. He had at least one point in 60 games, 18 games with three or more points, and five games with four or more. He added 33 power-play points and five game-winners.

And this wasn’t just empty stat-padding on a bad team. The Sharks improved from 20 wins and 52 points the year before to 39-35-8 and 86 points. That’s a 34-point swing. Celebrini was the biggest reason.

He was also a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award — which is voted on by the players, not the media. His 115-point season is the third-highest scoring season by a teenager in NHL history, behind only Wayne Gretzky (137 in 1979-80) and Sidney Crosby (120 in 2006-07). That’s the company he’s keeping.

So yeah, the IIHF vote wasn’t a surprise. The surprise would’ve been if anyone else had won.