What We Learned: San Jose Sharks in near-uncharted water with newly signed rookies

Will Smith turns 20 in March. Macklin Celebrini turns 19 in June.

As such, they will play the vast majority of the regular season both being teenaged NHL rookies. This puts them in incredibly rarified air. And it seems a bit risky in terms of "rushing guys to the NHL."

Since 2007-08, there have been just 140 teen rookies who got ice time for nearly a full campaign — at least 1,000 minutes in 82-game seasons, 500 in seasons with fewer games. That's only about eight per year, though the way things are shaping up, it seems like this season could push that average up a bit. But critically, the number of teams that carried two of them at the same time is just six. Chicago did it most recently, last year (Connor Bedard and Kevin Korchinski). Before that, it was Buffalo (Casey Mittelstadt and Rasmu