The Athletic Hockey Show · The Athletic

Is Macklin Celebrini a Hart Trophy favorite?

·52 min·2 clips
Macklin Celebrini's 12-game point streak and 67 points in 43 games are driving a real Hart Trophy case.
The episode opens by arguing about how long Happy New Year is still fair game. Someone treats January 3 as the cutoff, and someone else is not buying it. That bit sets the tone for the rest of the episode. The panel then turns to a light NHL night with only five games on the board. Dallas' win over Washington is treated like routine business rather than a thriller. The real conversation starts with the Rangers. Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox become the names that matter most. Fox is framed as having had a strong season, even if not everyone in the room would say it exactly that way. His earlier shoulder absence gets used as a reminder of what the team looks like without him. During that stretch the Rangers hovered around .500 and their underlying numbers slipped. Shesterkin played well enough then to cover for some of the damage. That makes a longer Fox absence feel more dangerous now. The group keeps circling back to the same question. If both the goalie and the defenseman are compromised, how far can the team realistically go? The trade deadline follows naturally from that. A possible Kiefer Sherwood move is mentioned, but it is not treated as a cure-all. The bigger issue is whether the Rangers should be adding at all. Their place in the standings and their uneven play make selling sound less far-fetched than it should. The episode then swerves into a Team Canada women's Olympic roster joke and some cookies-and-good-juju nonsense. It closes with the next-show schedule and the usual goodbye.

As heard by us

Loose banter gives way to a Rangers deadline argument, and the injuries make the stakes feel immediate.

The episode starts as an extended New Year check in and then settles into a Rangers centered hockey conversation. The best stretch comes when the panel drops the jokes and asks what the team can be without Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox.

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Why you'd press play

New Year banter gives way to a Rangers injury and deadline debate worth hearing.

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