Celebrini & Smith a Dynamic Duo Breakdown...

[0:00]There is a new dynamic duo in the NHL and if you study their behaviors, it has the potential to change the way you play hockey for the rest of your career. That duo is Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. For the past decade, there have been some pretty sick forward pairs. You have the Classics, McDavid and Dryl, McKinnon Rantanen, Matthews Marner, and now we have new ones, like McKinnon Nachos, Suzuki Caufield, Hughes and Bratt. But the San Jose Sharks have a duo that could replicate some of the best in the league, and they're only just getting started. At only 19 and 20 years old, both with either over a point-per-game or close to it this season, Celebrini and Smith are only getting better. In this video, I'm going to break down why their chemistry works, the three mental game pillars that make them so dangerous, and most importantly, how you can use the exact same blueprint in your own game. No matter who you play with or what level, because what these two do is not about genetics, it's not elite talent magic. It's a framework, it's repeatable, and it's trainable. For the past couple years, I've spent a lot of time researching the NHL's most creative, patient players. It has helped correct massive flaws a lot of my clients were making. You see most players think patience and creativity is something you only have when you're confident. If you only feel good about yourself, you could throw some nasty speed changes in and create some amazing new situation. These would lead you down an endless rabbit hole of seeking validation from your coaches, teammates, and trying to hype yourself up with positive visualization. This is a waste of time and it's exactly what I used to do as a player. In reality, creativity and patience are specific actions with specific moments where they are best optimized. It is about clear observable events than internal feelings you have. There are specific things Celebrini and Smith look for from opponents that tell them when to be creative. Before we get into the things that most creative and patient players do and what this video is about, we have to get into another thing that most creative players do, which is seek out tactical advice from coaches all over the world. Skating coaches in Sweden, Skills coaches in Canada and the US. The best players are lifelong learners who don't just robotically follow their coach's instructions, which are simplified for everyone on a team, and you don't get to increase your established skill set. They smooth you out. This is why I created conscious hockey to help players make better decisions all over the ice through a structured program where you get to work with me directly. I am currently accepting applications to work with me. Click the link below to apply with my program. You take the guest work out of your development and follow a clear, step-by-step path. I recommend applying if your goal is to play juniors college or Pro, and you already take your development very seriously but you feel like there's something missing mental rather than physical. The first thing you need to understand about Celebrini and Smith is their patience and creativity is not random. They understand hesitation and taking your foot off the gas can be a weapon. Most players treat pressure as something to escape. Celebrini and Smith treat pressure as a force to control and reshape their opponents. They'll skate closer to a defender on purpose, not to dangle or expose the puck for no reason, but instead to tease the defense into reach at their weakest end range poke check. Creativity isn't random. It is seeing the strength of the defender and not avoiding it, but instead staying on the perimeter of it to encourage an over commitment. The willingness to hold the puck long enough for a defender to break the smooth defending route you started on is one of the main cues Celebrini and Smith look for. Imagine yourself like a floating feather. If you try to punch a feather with full power, the gust of wind you create will change its trajectory and it will flutter around where the air is calmer. Using patience is very similar. You have to purposely tease your opponent near their strength and when they get annoyed, that is when you change direction and cut the other way. What makes Celebrini and Smith so good together is they both create those awkwardly defending opponents, which slows the game down, allowing other teammates to get into better positions. While this happens, new pockets of open space open up and are easier to access once that defender overreacts to the first creative speed change. The second advantage they have is consistency, which is the part nobody knows how to talk about because for the most part, it seems random. Most players and coaches look at top producers and attribute superstition or inborn traits or hard work to their success. Celebrini and Smith don't rely on invincible feelings of confidence to determine what they do in the game. They rely on specific patterns and behaviors. The same adaptable routes to get the puck in good areas, the same timing cues against defenders, giving them different looks. They rely on patterns, but not the overly simplistic ones noticed by most people. Adaptive patterns that live and breathe, just like the game of hockey. No two situations are ever the same, so their mental frameworks for recognizing these patterns need to adapt. You see this across other dynamic duos. Sure, McDavid sets up dry saddle for one-timers all the time, but it's rarely ever in the exact same way. Most players don't have this flexible system for recognizing patterns at the instinctual level. They rely on emotional feelings they get from good shifts or bad shifts, but if you really reflect on many of your chances, a lot of times it has nothing to do with the conscious decision you made and it was based in some event that took place outside of your control. You have no purpose of what to look for with or without the puck, your consistency is at the whim of random events that happened to you. Without understanding why something happened and how to repeat it in various ways, you're doomed to a roller coaster of highs and lows. Take this fake here. It's designed to open up more space on the opposite side. This is not an isolated strategy. It's something that happens over and over. Celebrini does the same thing before he dishes the puck to Smith for the give and go. Celebrini and Smith are consistent producers not because they rely on set plays or emotions to guide them, but because they understand the adaptable patterns they need to use to make real decisions. And the final pillar is their comfort under pressure. Both players shrink their game down, even when the intensity rises. You'll see Celebrini skate into a defender or engage physically first, even when he has the puck with no panic whatsoever, because he is not measuring danger in the way that most players do. Most players see a defender close the gap and their internal alarm system goes off. They get really tense and they try to escape that aggression. They tense up and they rush their puck touches. They fire the puck away just to avoid that initial mistake. Celebrini and Smith think of pressure as an ocean wave, that once they absorb that first impact, it is followed by a period of calm. This is really what all dynamic offensive players do. Surviving the contact fast and that first danger opens up opportunities that can be leveraged into over commitments from defenders. When this defender is skating at Celebrini here, imagine it as a single punch. Yes, there's an impact, but if you can direct that impact off course or interrupt it before it's at full power, it will take time before the punch can reload and be at full strength again. Neither Celebrity nor Smith possess insane top-end speed of a McDavid or a McKinnon. But they manage to produce without it because they are comfortable under pressure. If you look at pressure as a never-ending flow of power, you'll panic and dump the puck away immediately. Severely limiting any possible options. If you look at pressure for what it is, a brief strike in a specific area, which can be controlled and directed, followed by a calm opening up of space. Then you will access so many more opportunities. These three pillars of patience, consistency, and comfort under pressure create chemistry blueprint that any player can study and apply. You don't need to be Celebrini or Smith to use this. You don't need their talent. You don't even need another player on the same lines with these strategies. What you do need is clarity. You need a system that shows you what each moment is supposed to achieve. When you have that system, your confidence doesn't come and go. Your speed becomes actually intentional, your skills become intentional. Your puck touches improve instead of evaporating under stress. This is what I train players to do build instincts, not just random skills or flashy moves, but actually repeatable structures underneath instincts that make the game feel controlled instead of chaotic. If you want help building that system out for your own game, the same type of framework that allows duos like Celebrini and Smith to play patiently and consistently under pressure, then use the link in the description to apply and work with me. See you in the next video.