Macklin Celebrini is the cover athlete for EA Sports NHL 27, giving the San Jose Sharks center a new spotlight after a season that already put him among hockey’s biggest names. EA Sports unveiled him on Thursday, with the reveal trailer premiering on YouTube at 11 a.m. ET.
The choice makes Celebrini only the second Sharks player to appear on the game’s cover, after Owen Nolan in 2001. It also arrives with a simple explanation built into the timing: he has been everywhere hockey attention has landed this year, from Team Canada’s run at the 2026 Winter Olympics to the race for the 2026 ESPY Awards.
Celebrini, 20, was the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Male Player of the Year for the 2025-26 season after leading the 2026 Winter Olympics with five goals. He finished second with 10 points in six games, helped Canada win silver and made the tournament All-Star Team. In May, he also captained Canada at the 2026 IIHF World Championship, finishing second among all scorers with 14 points in 10 games.
His club season was just as loud. The No. 1 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft finished fourth in the NHL and set a Sharks record with 115 points in 82 games, including 45 goals and 70 assists. He had a point in 60 games, reached at least three points 18 times and at least four points five times, while adding 33 power-play points and five game-winning goals. He was also a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award.
That is why the cover reveal matters beyond a routine game announcement. Celebrini is being sold as the face of NHL 27 even though San Jose finished 39-35-8 with 86 points after managing only 20 wins and 52 points the season before. The franchise’s turn is real, but the leap from a promising team to a cover athlete also shows how quickly one player’s year can outgrow the results around him.
Celebrini is one of four nominees for Best NHL Player at the 2026 ESPY Awards, where he is up against Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid. The awards will be held in New York City on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on, leaving the NHL 27 reveal as another marker of how far Celebrini’s rise has gone. What EA Sports saw behind the selection remains unstated, but the company has made its case in the clearest way possible: the game now opens with him.
