Canucks defence prospect Aiden Celebrini to play at Boston University in 2023–24

Aiden Celebrini, the Vancouver Canucks’ final selection at the 2023 NHL Draft, will make his NCAA debut for the Boston University Terriers in the 2023–24 season.

The Terriers announced on Monday that Celebrini will be part of a class of nine incoming freshmen for the upcoming season. The Canucks selected the right-handed defenceman with a sixth-round pick (No. 171 overall) back in June.

Celebrini, 18, posted five goals and 21 points in 47 games with the Brooks Bandits during the 2022–23 AJHL regular season. He remained a steady, consistent presence on the Brooks blue line throughout the playoffs as the team captured both the AJHL championship and the Centennial Cup as the top Junior A team in Canada.

The Canucks made seven selections at the 2023 NHL Draft, beginning with right-handed defenceman Tom Willander in the first round with the No. 11 overall pick. In all, the Canucks used four of their seven picks on defencemen, with Hunter Brzustewicz and Sawyer Mynio joining Willander and Celebrini in the pipeline.

On Tuesday, the Terriers announced that Macklin Celebrini, Aiden’s brother who starred for the USHL’s Chicago Steel as a 16-year-old in 2022–23, will also head to Boston College for the 2023–24 season.

Macklin Celebrini is a five-foot-eleven forward and a strong candidate to play a big role for Team Canada at the 2024 IIHF World Junior Championship in Sweden. The Celebrini brothers hail from Vancouver.

Aiden Celebrini joined the Bandits in 2022 after spending two seasons at the prestigious Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota. He was one of three players from the high-flying 2022–23 Bandits to be selected in the 2023 NHL Draft, joining Hudson Malinoski (Toronto Maple Leafs) and Aiden Fink (Nashville Predators).

In addition to their four defencemen, the Canucks selected forwards Ty Mueller, Vilmer Alriksson, and Matthew Perkins in the fourth round of the 2023 NHL Draft. The Canucks went heavy on rearguards this year after struggling to graduate defence prospects into the NHL in recent seasons, with the last successful one of note being Quinn Hughes.