The excitement of the NHL draft is expected to begin after the Sharks likely selected Celebrini with the first pick

“We’ll see Friday night,” Grier said this week.

And yet, the third-year GM was enthusiastic when asked what else he had learned about Boston University’s center over the past six weeks.

“We had dinner with him and he sat at a table with eight grown men and had the conversation, and he felt comfortable and at ease,” Grier said of dinner with Celebrini at the combine three weeks ago.

“If you sit down with him for two minutes, you can really feel his drive and competitiveness. It just oozes out of him,” he added. “He’s a driven kid. He’s an alpha.”

In other words, the just-18-year-old is the kind of foundational piece Grier can use to add to an expanding talent pool as he rebuilds a franchise amid its longest playoff drought, now spanning five years.

At 6-foot-4 and nearly 200 pounds, Celebrini finished second in the nation with 32 goals and third with 64 points in 38 games as college hockey’s youngest player. Although a native of Northern British Columbia, Celebrini played for the Junior Sharks program for a year after his father, Rick, was hired as vice president of player health and performance for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

With Celebrini likely to go first, the intrigue hinges on the order of the next five picks; whether the two-day draft will feature one or two big trades involving Toronto’s Mitch Marner and Columbus’ Patrik Laine; and the visual spectacle inside and out. Las Vegas’ one-year-old Sphere will play in the staging of his first sporting event.

Celebrini looks forward to experiencing the Sphere in more ways than one.

“I’ve never been there,” he said, Wednesday. “From everything I’ve heard about it, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Speaking about his lengthy preparation process coming to an end, Celebrini said: “It’s a big moment, something I’ve dreamed of since I was a child. I am excited, nervous and grateful to have this opportunity.”

The draft is also a coming-out party for the Utah Hockey Club, after the franchise moved from Arizona to Salt Lake City in the offseason.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” general manager Bill Armstrong said of what color jerseys the team’s new crop of prospects will don, with Utah currently holding 13 picks in the seven-round draft, starting with No. 6.

The Chicago Blackhawks have leveraged the draft by acquiring the second overall pick, a year after selecting center Connor Bedard first last season.

Without saying who the Blackhawks selected at the No. 2 spot, general manager Kyle Davidson said his staff had a healthy discussion before reaching their decision.

“There are great options. And so when you have great options, you should talk about them,” Davidson said Thursday. “If it was a no-brainer, we probably would have known months ago, or when the lottery would happen.”

The prevailing wisdom has Chicago’s picks split between two defensemen: Michigan State’s Artyom Levshunov and Russian Anton Silayev, and Russian forward Ivan Demidov.

Although Levshunov left his native Belarus two years ago to play in North America, the Russian talents raise questions. NHL teams have not been allowed to enter the country to scout and meet players since the war in Ukraine.

Davidson has not yet met Silayev, who is listed at 6-foot-4 and 211 pounds, but did get the chance to meet Demidov last week at a player-agent-run combination of Russian players in Florida.

“A really impressive young man,” Davidson said of Demidov. “He was a great piece of information for us. And a great kind of button to push on the design process that was needed to get everything in.”

Anaheim ranks third, followed by Columbus and Montreal.

Other top prospects in the top five include Medicine Hat Tigers center Cayden Lindstrom and University of Denver defenseman Zeev Buium.

According to Dan Marr, director of central scouting, the top of this year’s draft class is made up of defensemen who possess a variety of strengths.

“No two are the same. It’s like a smorgasbord,” Marr said.

One position that doesn’t have a ton of talent is goalie, with some predicting the first goalie to come off the board in the third round. The highest-rated goalie is considered to be Mikhail Yegorov, who hails from Moscow, played for USHL Omaha last season and is committed to BU.

The uncertainty about the ranking of Demidov and Silayev by the teams means that Armstrong has different plans for place 6.

“It’s a matter of guesswork now,” he said.

What is clear is how Salt Lake City has embraced its NHL franchise.

“People wave at me on the street, and it’s kind of weird because they know who you are in Salt Lake City. And if you’re in Arizona, you’re kind of unnoticed,” Armstrong said. “This is a big thing in the state of Utah and in Salt Lake, and you can feel it.”

Associated Press freelance writer WG Ramirez contributed to this report.

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