We Need To Talk About Cutter Gauthier

Cutter Gauthier, on the surface, is having a great sophomore season for Boston College. With 13G-10A for 23 points in 17 games. That’s an impressive stat line.

CUTTER GAUTHIER!!! HIS 12TH OF THE YEAR. #FLYERS pic.twitter.com/VKGYpEh2Fd

— TLY (@TheLibertyYell) November 26, 2023

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Already, problems begin to arise.

Breaking that down into points per game, it’s not a particularly impressive leap from his 37 points in 32 games last year. It’s made even less impressive by the cast of characters that surround him now compared to last season. Does he play with the trio of freshmen at 5 on 5? No. But he does play with all of them on the power-play, and he’s feasting on the power-play.

Of course, none of this is the essence of my real problem with Cutter’s second year at Boston College. I recognize that the team structures itself in a way to make life difficult for him. He’s playing with older college players who have no NHL futures, while three of the brightest prospects in the sport play on a line together. Like Oliver Moore was in his draft season, Cutter is not placed in an ideal position.

That he scores fewer even strength points is to be expected, but I was curious about what he does at even strength. What is he bringing to the NHL with him? What is the essence of Cutter Gauthier’s game? For every player in the league, it needs to be more than a shot.

Eeli Tolvanen has a great shot. It isn’t getting him out of Seattle’s middle six. Jack Hughes allegedly fired pillows in his draft season, and he’s now a 45-50 goal player. There are so many things that go into goal scoring than merely shooting the puck with enviable mechanics and ridiculous innate power. If I had to make a list of the least important qualities in a player, shot velocity would be at the top of it.

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So what is Cutter bringing besides the novelty of his wrist shot?

To help answer that question, Lassi Alanen of EliteProspects–with the help of statistics provided by InStat–tracked a wide array of micro-stats to see what each individual player is bringing to the game. Do they carry the puck? Do they win puck battles? Do they set up a lot of dangerous chances for teammates? All of these can be found in the data.

I would heartily recommend following @lassialanen on X to see more prospects.

I’ve taken the liberty of putting last year’s Cutter side-by-side with this year.

Posted for article purposes. pic.twitter.com/9xilKrgEXm

— Derek (@SuitableAlias) December 13, 2023

Overall, Cutter last year was an end-to-end transition threat. He used a combination of puck-handling abilities, speed and power, and passing acumen to completely dominate in transition. He was responsible for a ton of defensive zone exits and even more offensive zone entries. He was a ridiculous puck transporter.

This year, he’s regressed by a significant margin in his ability to transport the puck. Despite being a year older, he went from the 97th percentile in the NCAA–outshining the likes of Logan Cooley and Adam Fantilli in transition play–to the 81st percentile. That’s a staggering drop.

The least affected portion of his transition game has been his ability to carry the puck into the offensive zone. It’s suffered a drop, but a rather negligible one. Instead, it’s been every other category that has regressed significantly. While he used to generate a ton of zone exits with his feet and even more with his passing, he has since regressed in both categories.

While he used to generate more zone entries with a passing play than the average NCAA player, he now generates marginally less than the average NCAA player.

His frequency of engaging in puck battles is up from last year. But he went from marginally below average to marginally above. At this rate, it could simply be noise rather than meaningful improvement. And in either event, it’s simply not good enough for the amount of puck battles he wins when he chooses to engage. Just look at his success rate in both years.

His shot assists are up from last year. His slot passes may be slightly increased, but it’s hard to tell through the visualization. It’s a modest improvement in his passing game.

The only area he’s notably improved is his shot frequency. He already shot from the parking lot. Now he shoots from everywhere, all at once. He’s quite literally breaking the charts in terms of shot frequency, but his expected goal totals from those shots (once again) lag behind the tremendous raw volume of shooting opportunities.

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Being able to generate your own shot is good. Cutter can do it. Being willing to take a shot, even one that isn’t ideal, is good. Cutter is. And he is a good enough shooter to warrant taking some of these shots.

But this simply isn’t good enough. Forget being a star or not, I don’t want a player like this in an NHL top 6. It is not anywhere close to adequate. I cannot be any more clear about this.

Perhaps the most infuriating part of this? Cutter has the talent for so much more. It’s represented in this data. Despite taking every shot he can find, he still has the vision to produce more slot passes and shot assists per 60 than the average NCAA player. It’s all over his film. He sees lanes and hits them with ease and fluidity.

He just doesn’t care to try. He’s so exceedingly arrogant that he thinks a bad shot taken by him is better than a great shot taken by his teammates. He’s egomaniacal, and he won’t live up to his potential if his obsession with his shot continues unabated.

He doesn’t engage in battles. He doesn’t make plays for teammates. He’s not even an end-to-end transition threat anymore. He just waits in the neutral zone so he can carry a puck in and shoot. It’s an arrogant, cherry-picking play style. And frankly, he doesn’t have the track record of success to justify being so cocky.

We can blame his linemates and his lack of support, but that doesn’t stop him from doing what he wants to do. He wants to carry the puck over the blue line and shoot-shoot-shoot. Sure enough, he can do that at mind-boggling volumes. So his support isn’t holding him back from doing what he is interested in.

His support, conveniently, only holds him back from doing the stuff he doesn’t want to do. Which, of course, means it has nothing to do with support or linemates. And everything to do with willingness and interest. Cutter has all the physical tools in the world. He’s just too arrogant to use them. He can’t be bothered to do anything but the most glamorous parts of hockey.

Using his speed and strength to go retrieve pucks in the offensive zone and be an effective forechecker? Absolutely not, that isn’t very cool. Using his skating and size to protect pucks and make plays for others? Well, that won’t make as many highlight reels as flinging that wrister!

He will barrel through contact and beat defenders wide when it’s time to shoot the puck, because, by God… he wants to shoot. Cutter will turn into Mario Lemieux if you just let him shoot at the end of the sequence.

If you ask him to play hockey seriously? Oh, no. He can’t do that. His linemates, for as much as they apparently suck and hold him back, are good enough to win pucks for him and give him opportunities to shoot. But they’re not good enough to ever get the puck back.

That isn’t a lack of ability. It’s a lack of interest. It’s an abundance of entitlement, and I’m baffled why someone who was never considered the best prospect in his draft class has such high estimations of his prestige.

For all that shit he talked about his “compete” in post-draft interviews… where the hell is it? It isn’t showing up in you winning a ton of pucks for your line, Cutter. It isn’t showing up in you working yourself off of the wall and setting up your teammates, Cutter. It isn’t showing up at all.

What is showing up is that you love to shoot. That’s great. This is the National Hockey League you presumably want to play in, right? Not the National Wrist Shot League? We didn’t change the name, did we?

Do you know why I’m writing this? Is it to shit on Cutter? Is it too badger Cutter? Well, yes. I am doing both of those things. But I am not doing them because it pleases me. I am doing it because someone in his life needs to do this for him.

I’m doing it because he has all the talent in the world, and he seems fiercely determined to waste it. I’m doing it because his potential is sky-high, and it’d be a damn shame if he wasted it because he simply didn’t care to make the most of it. It would suck for him and his future career earnings. It would suck for the Flyers. And it would suck for the sport of hockey because an engaged Cutter Gauthier is a ridiculously fun player.

Hey, he wouldn’t be the first guy to have this profile and magically cure himself. Matvei Michkov in the VHL looked like this. He even looked somewhat like this in the MHL. At the U-18s, he looked like this until he faced Team Canada and realized that he couldn’t just coast against those guys.

Because that’s who Michkov is. He’s a prodigy who is easily bored. He’s continuously looking for new challenges, and if he doesn’t get them, he starts acting out. Is it annoying? Maybe to you. I find it amusing. And I’m not concerned by it, because it’s what leads him to seek out new challenges. He wants to be as good as humanly possible, and he won’t suffer fools who hold him back. Michkov in the KHL is a different player. Michkov in the biggest games of his life is a totally different player.

If you challenge him, he will respond.

Cutter has yet to show that willingness or ability to flip the switch. And that makes it concerning because it means he doesn’t think he needs to.

And no, it doesn’t mean you can sit him on the wing and all these problems go away. This isn’t about center or wing. Cutter isn’t playing well enough to project to be a top 6 center or a top 6 wing. A baby-shit soft shooter who has no interest in playing this sport when he isn’t taking potshots at a goalie? Sorry, kid. I’m not wasting the damn salary cap space on that. I don’t care how much you practiced your curl and drag release.

You patterned your shot off Auston Matthews, did you? How about you start using that abundant physical talent to teach yourself the dozens of other things Auston Matthews does at an elite level to be the player he is?

I’d love to see it. We all would. And that’s the thing. You can do it. If you want to.

Mandatory Credit: YONG KIM / Staff Photographer for Inquirer