SIMMONS SAYS: Is Macklin Celebrini ready to handle his new status as the NHL’s highest-paid player?

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The new economics of hockey will find Macklin Celebrini earning $6 million more than Connor McDavid next season.

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And quite possibly, Celebrini will be paid $10 million more than Sidney Crosby at the same time.

As great as Celebrini may be — and it’s hard to know where he will find his place on any career list alongside Crosby and McDavid — for now, the money puts him in a new place in hockey, as the highest-paid player in history.

At least until the next highest-paid player in history happens to sign for more than $18.8 million a season.

Crosby won an NHL scoring championship and a Hart Trophy as most valuable player before he added his first Stanley Cup in his fourth NHL season. He was a fast starter.

Coming up, this is Celebrini’s third season in San Jose. The Sharks are not expected to compete for any Cup just yet.

And by his third season in Edmonton, McDavid had already won two scoring titles, one MVP, and still it would be six more years before he would have any shot at the Stanley Cup which came in Year 9 and 10. Not the victories, just a shot at the big one.

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The question with Celebrini now, being the benefactor of the failed Philadelphia offer-sheet signing for Leo Carlsson, is how will he deal with being atop the salary list?

For some players, that’s a comfort zone. For others, it can be serious pressure. This is Vladimir Guerrero’s first year of his giant contract in baseball: He is clearly not performing to anything close to expectations.

Is that a money thing? There’s no way of quantifying that.

Celebrini went from 63 points as a rookie missing some games to a 115-point scorer as a sophomore.

So where does he go from here?

McDavid went from 100 points to 108 to 116 in three early seasons. Wayne Gretzky went from 137 to 164 to the seemingly impossible figure of 212 points in a different period of time.

How much room is there for Celebrini to grow?

Crosby was the best player in hockey. He chose not be the highest-paid. McDavid is now the best player in hockey, and he too chose not to be the highest-paid.

Celebrini has taken a different route. He is the highest-paid player. How he will handle that remains to be seen.

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THIS AND THAT

Larry Tanenbaum’s time as chairman of the board of the NBA concludes at the end of this month. That means something right now as the Raptors are caught in a squeeze play while the NBA attempts to figure out what to do with Kawhi Leonard and, more importantly, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Here’s the rub: Leonard will be coming to the Raptors. Ballmer will be suspended or fined by the league. Tanenbaum may still be in position to help finesse on behalf of the Raptors — no longer his team — in the difficult place commissioner Adam Silver finds himself in. Ballmer is one of the richest men in the world and the richest owner in the NBA. And he likes to think he’s one of the most powerful men in his game. Silver has to find a way to punish Ballmer, but not upset him too much and have Leonard still moved to the Raptors. Tanenbaum’s last official days in office are going to be internally fascinating … Even if the Blue Jays are trading away Kevin Gausman, wouldn’t you consider bringing him back next season? Assuming there is a next season. Gausman loves the city and the team. The top of the pitching rotation will have Dylan Cease and Trey Yesavage next year. It doesn’t have much after that. What’s wrong with Gausman as a fourth or fifth starter? If he’s willing to accept that. At reasonable money, the Jays should consider it. This has been five years of Gausman with the Jays. His durability is rare for major-league starters these days. That, by itself, is worth something … When Lou Piniella first joined the New York Yankees as a player, owner George Steinbrenner demanded he get a haircut. Piniella, as way his way, argued back. He told Steinbrenner that the great Jesus Christ had long hair and did quite well with it. Steinbrenner walked Piniella over to a swimming pool and informed him that said: “When you can walk across that, you can play here with long hair.”

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HEAR AND THERE

The list of Triple Crown winners before Miguel Cabrera in 2012 is rather imposing: Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Robinson, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams were the four who came before Cabrera. Four all-time greats. Now the possibility of another Triple Crown winner: Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros. He leads the American League in batting, home runs, RBIs — the Triple Crown standards — but also in runs scored, hits, OPS, on-base percentage, slugging and WAR. Completely unrelated, there has not been a National League Triple Crown winner since 1937 … Even though he has 10-5 protection from being dealt away, if I were George Springer, I would accept a trade to any contending team. The reason: He’s a free agent after this season. He’s not likely coming back to the Blue Jays. Might as well go after one more playoff run before you run out of time … Cade Smith, the Canadian from Mennonite Educational Institute in Abbotsford, B.C., leads all of Major League Baseball in saves with the Cleveland Guardians … Go figure this Blue Jays season. Their high-leverage relief pitchers — Louis Varland, Tyler Rogers and Jeff Hoffman — have been superb in June and July, giving up just 10 earned runs in almost 68 innings pitched. That’s a combined earned run average of 1.33. Yet, at the same time the Jays have won just 22 of 50 games in that span … You can place a wager on just about everything in professional sports today, but I don’t see a betting house anywhere offering a date for when Vladdy will hit his first home run at the Rogers Centre this season. And for the record, this piece of comedy isn’t very funny … Dusty Baker, with one World Series win as a manager with five different teams, is considered a sure-thing Hall of Famer in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, Cito Gaston, with two World Series championships, only one team, remains something of an afterthought … It’s one day until Monday’s 6 p.m. baseball trade deadline and I fully expect Gausman, Daulton Varsho and Springer to be dealt by the Jays. I wouldn’t be so fast to trade Hoffman. He could still be a building piece for a contending team here in the future … More on Celebrini: While the $18.8 million seems giant by hockey standards, it is hardly giant for the rest of pro sports. Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s highest-paid player at $63 million a year, Shohei Ohtani leads baseball at $70 million and Steph Curry leads the NBA at $62 million. Even in Major League Soccer, Lionel Messi is taking home $28 million a year.

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SCENE AND HEARD

Mats Sundin, a first overall pick in the NHL draft, scored 1.06 points a game in 13 seasons with the Leafs. That got him to the Hall of Fame. Auston Matthews, also a first overall pick, is scoring at 1.13 points per game in his career to date. Matthews has played 292 fewer games played as a Leaf than Sundin but has already passed him in goal-scoring. Last season, however, was Matthews’ lowest in goals, points and points per game. This is a giant season for the Leafs captain — playing under the former captain Sundin for the first time … The Leafs are paying big money to bring in Andy O’Brien as strength and conditioning coach. He’s well-known in the industry as Crosby’s longtime trainer. That’s a good thing. What’s not such a good thing: The Leafs fired conditioning coaches Louis Rojas, Artie Hairston and Trevor Bartoli on Friday, basically too late for any of them to likely find a job for the upcoming NHL season … O’Brien, by the way, used to be Hayley Wickenheiser’s trainer, as well … Bob McElligott spent 17 years as the radio play-by-play man with the Columbus Blue Jackets. In that time, the assessed value of the Blue Jackets grew from $165 million to $1.3 billion. So if the Jackets want to say that replacing radio announcers with a television simulcast is pure economics, that’s nonsense. The cost to do radio for a season is about half the cost of the 23rd player on any NHL roster … It’s not a lot different than the giant Rogers people not paying for baseball, football and basketball radio people to go on the road. That’s not smart business. That’s cheap business … The Blue Jackets did make a smart move in hiring Don Granato, maybe the perfect NHL assistant coach, to work alongside Rick Bowness … The Senators thought so much of Daniel Alfredsson as an assistant coach in Ottawa that they have chosen not to replace him … I don’t care much for the 84-game NHL schedule coming up, except for the fact there might be more 50-goal scorers in coming years. There have been only 22 of those in the past 10 seasons and nine of them have been Alex Ovechkin or Leon Draisaitl … In the 1992-93 season alone, 14 players scored at least 50. That’s too many. Too many isn’t good and neither is too few … It’s looking as though ex-Leaf Bryan McCabe, an OverDrive favourite, is leaving the Florida Panthers for a hockey operations position with the New Jersey Devils … Why can’t the Seattle Kraken have nice things? The terrific broadcaster Ed Olczyk has chosen to leave the Kraken television broadcasts while continuing to do his national gig for TNT. Olczyk is one of the very best in the business.

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AND ANOTHER THING

The 30th anniversary of Donovan Bailey’s 100-metre victory at the Atlanta Olympics passed rather quietly the other day. But understand this: It’s a top-five individual moment in Canadian sports history. The 30th anniversary of Bailey’s 4×100 team victory in Atlanta is this Monday. What a fabulous two Saturdays that was in all of the Atlanta confusion of three decades ago … Roberto Alomar gets no mention anywhere around the Blue Jays any longer, but he did make it into a Baseball Hall of Fame speech by Cleveland writer Paul Haynes last weekend. “I’ve never been to the ballet,” said Hoynes in his acceptance speech at Cooperstown, “but I have seen Omar VIzquel and Roberto Alomar perform their magic in the middle of the infield.” … This week in WNBA political nonsense: Caitlin Clark has a magnificent triple-double on Friday night — she now has the third most in history — and after the game, she was not made available to the media … I haven’t said this in many years: The Winnipeg Blue Bombers stink. I mean really stink. Maybe Mike O’Shea made the wrong decision choosing to stay in Winnipeg rather than leave to coach the Argonauts … You want to feel old? The great Russ Jackson just celebrated his 90th birthday. Made me think about Canadians playing in the Canadian Football League: My list of best Canadians in CFL history: 1. Jackson; 2. Tony Gabriel; 3. Chris Walby; 4. Ray Elgaard; 5. The Philpott twins; 6. Nathan Rourke … This is not including Joe Krol, Royal Copeland or anyone who happened to kick the football such as Lui Passaglia or Hank Ilesic … As you probably can tell, I love lists. So here’s another one. My top Canadian wrestlers, purely personal, of all-time: 1 Bret Hart; 2. Rowdy Roddy Piper; 3. Abdullah The Butcher; 4. Owen Hart; 5. Edge; 6. Edouard Carpentier; 7. Gene Kiniski; 8. Mad Dog Vachon; 9. Whipper Billy Watson; 10. Trish Stratus. And honourable mention to the legend, Iron Mike Sharpe … The folks around Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment were bragging months back about having turned around Toronto FC’s fortunes. And yeah, if winning one of their past 13 games is turning it around, then congrats to the front office folks at the large corporation … Happy birthday to Scottie Barnes (25); Evander Kane (35), Madison Bumgarner (37); Tony Amonte (56); Kristaps Porzingis (31); Edgerrin James (48), Pete Mackanin (75) and Syl Apps Jr. (79) … And hey, whatever became of Jose Reyes?

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