There’s a number in Macklin Celebrini’s new contract that matters more than the $18.8 million everyone keeps repeating, and it isn’t a dollar figure at all. It’s a season: 2027-28. That’s when the richest annual contract in NHL history actually starts paying out, two full seasons from now.
San Jose signed its 20-year-old center to a five-year, $94 million extension this week, an AAV of $18.8 million that jumps past Leo Carlsson’s $18 million with Anaheim as the highest annual value any player has been paid in league history, making Celebrini the highest-paid player in the NHL in 2026 by that measure. Celebrini turned 20 on June 13, a few weeks removed from the best individual season a Sharks skater has produced since the franchise joined the league in 1991-92. He was 19 when he built that season. He’s 20 now, and the extension he just signed doesn’t pay him a full share of that record number until he’s 21.
How Does Celebrini’s $18.8M AAV Compare to Leo Carlsson’s Deal?
Celebrini’s $18.8 million AAV edges past Leo Carlsson’s $18 million with Anaheim by $800,000 a year, making Celebrini the highest-paid player in NHL history by average annual value. Carlsson set his mark this same offseason, after the Ducks matched a Philadelphia offer sheet, meaning the league’s two highest-paid players by AAV were both established within weeks of each other.
That timing isn’t a coincidence so much as a chain reaction. Carlsson forced Anaheim’s hand with an offer sheet from the Flyers, and the number that resulted became the new ceiling for about as long as it took San Jose to finish negotiating with Celebrini’s camp. An $800,000 gap now separates two players in their early twenties who haven’t won anything yet, which tells you the market has stopped waiting for a resume and started paying straight off the growth curve.
Why Doesn’t the Contract Start Until 2027-28?
Celebrini signed an extension, not a contract that replaces his current one. He’s still finishing the three-year entry-level deal he signed as a teenager, which runs through the 2026-27 season and carries a cap hit in the $950,000 to $975,000 range. The $94 million extension begins the following year, in 2027-28, and runs through 2031-32.
Entry-level deals are the league’s version of a rookie wage scale. Every first-round-caliber prospect signs one, and the cap hit stays artificially low no matter how good the player turns out to be. Celebrini scored 115 points on that contract. San Jose is paying him a fraction of his market value for one more season, then paying him more than anyone else in the sport for the five after that. The gap between those two numbers, not the $18.8 million itself, is the actual story here.
What Does the Year-by-Year Salary Structure Actually Look Like?
The deal is heavily bonus-loaded: Celebrini’s $94 million breaks down to just $4.9 million in true base salary across all five years, with the remaining $89.1 million arriving as signing bonuses. Years one through three each pay $20.8 million, then the number tapers to $17.1 million in year four and $14.5 million in year five.
That breakdown holds a detail worth sitting with: years one and two pay a $950,000 salary plus a $19.85 million bonus apiece, year three bumps the base to $1 million against a $19.8 million bonus, and the final two years step the bonus down to $16.1 million and then $13.5 million while the base holds at $1 million. That’s a contract that pays its biggest numbers early and tapers by design. San Jose front-loads the money while term is freshest, then eases into year five, when a full no-move clause kicks in for Celebrini. Signing bonuses get taxed and scheduled differently than salary, and teams tend to lean on them when they want committed cash on a specific calendar rather than spread evenly across the deal. PuckPedia broke down the full year-by-year math this week:
https://x.com/PuckPedia/status/2082491022941302990
The breakdown lines up with what the Sharks’ front office described as flexibility, a word that really just means the front office knows exactly how much cap room this creates in each of the next five seasons, down to the dollar.
What This Deal Signals About the Sharks’ Core
General manager Mike Grier framed the deal in almost administrative language: “we want to thank Macklin and his representatives for a respectful negotiation process, and acknowledge the flexibility they have provided to the team in how we allocate future dollars towards the team being constructed around Macklin.” Read past the phrasing and it’s a thank-you note for the deferred payout itself. San Jose gets a full extra season of Celebrini at entry-level money before the record number arrives, and that’s a full year of extra cap room to build the roster around him.
Grier was more direct about the player. “In just two seasons as a teenager in the National Hockey League and on the International stage, Macklin has established himself as one of the premier players in the world,” he said. “We are extremely excited to have him secured and committed as the centerpiece of a core of talented players in San Jose.” Celebrini’s own statement pointed the same direction: “I couldn’t be happier to sign an extension today. The faith and support that Mr. Plattner, Mike Grier and the entire staff have shown me throughout the past two seasons is proof that we are building something special here.” That’s a 20-year-old choosing continuity over ever testing restricted free agency down the line.
The NHL offseason has been anything but quiet this summer, and Celebrini’s deal is the loudest data point yet that teams are paying for trajectory, not track record. A player who finished 4th in the NHL in points, tied for 4th in goals, and 7th in assists as a 19-year-old doesn’t have a body of work. He has a slope. San Jose just bought five years of that slope continuing upward, starting from a season the team hasn’t played yet.
Celebrini’s next contract snapshot won’t arrive until 2032, so the real test of this deal is years off. What’s already true: San Jose locked in the price of its rebuild before the market could reset around a growth curve like his again. For how the next teenage record gets set, our NHL coverage will be tracking it in real time. Give me the Sharks on this one. By 2029, $18.8 million for a top-five center is going to look like the discount, not the record.
