> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.keeganthecaniac.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Celebrini Is Going to Make More Than Any Two Hurricanes Combined - URL: https://www.keeganthecaniac.com/celebrini-is-going-to-make-more-than-any-two-hurricanes-combined/ - Published: 2026-07-29T21:05:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-29T21:11:53.000Z - Author: Keegan Macklin Celebrini signed today. Five years, 94 million, 18.8 a year. Highest cap hit in the league, passing Leo Carlsson's 18 from earlier this summer. And he earned it. I want to say that up front because I'm about to use his contract to make a point about us and I don't want it to read as a shot at him. The kid put up 115 points at 19, broke the Sharks franchise record, became the first teenager since Crosby to hit a hundred, finished fourth in Hart voting. He is going to be one of the five best players in the world for a decade. San Jose paid what that costs. ## Sign up for Keegan The Caniac Hurricanes takes and stories written for Caniacs, by a Caniac. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. But look at what that number is next to our roster. Sebastian Aho makes 9.75\. Nikolaj Ehlers makes 8.5\. Add them together and you get 18.25 million. Our best center and our best goal scorer, combined, cost less than Macklin Celebrini by himself. It keeps going. Svechnikov at 7.75, K'Andre Miller at 7.5, and Jordan Staal at 2.9 gets you to 18.15\. Three guys. Jarvis at 7.42 plus Slavin at 6.4 plus Kotkaniemi at 4.82 is 18.64\. Three more. Or go the other direction and start from the bottom. Eric Robinson, William Carrier, Kochetkov, Staal, Chatfield, Martinook, and Taylor Hall. That's seven players, including our captain and a former league MVP, for 17.8 million. Still less than one Celebrini. Here's the one that actually gets me though. Carolina won the Stanley Cup last season without a single player making 10 million dollars. Not one. Aho at 9.75 is the top of our payroll and he's barely over half of what Celebrini will make. We won a championship with our most expensive contract sitting below the ceiling that stars now blow past without blinking. I know the fair objection here. Celebrini's deal doesn't start until 2027-28, when the cap goes to 113.5 million, so comparing his future dollars to our current dollars isn't perfectly clean. As a share of the cap he'll be around sixteen percent, which is roughly what Aho and Ehlers eat up together right now. So it's not quite as lopsided as the raw numbers make it look. But that's sort of the point anyway. It's not really about the dollars. It's about the philosophy. San Jose just decided their path is one guy who is so good he lifts everything around him. That's a real strategy and it has worked before. If Celebrini turns into what he looks like he's turning into, they'll be fine with it. Carolina decided the opposite. Spread it out. Nine or ten guys in the five to nine million range instead of one at eighteen. Nobody on the roster who has to be great every single night for the thing to work. Which is why we could lose Jarvis for two months, get uneven goaltending for half a season, and still win sixty-some games and a Stanley Cup. I'm not going to sit here and tell you depth is always better than stars. Florida has stars. Vegas had stars. Edmonton has the best player alive and 317 wins and no ring, which cuts the other way. But I do think there's something to the fact that the team that just won it doesn't have anybody at 10 million, and the guy who just became the highest paid player in hockey plays for a team that hasn't made the playoffs since 2019. We built it the boring way. It worked. Go Canes.