Cutter Gauthier plays his best hockey, Team USA wins Gold at the 2023 World Junior Championships
It wasn’t that long ago that I expressed some concerns with Cutter Gauthier’s game that were, frankly, grave. I’d stand by the concerns that I had at the time, but I wouldn’t stand by some of the words that I used to express them.
I apologized for my concerns about Cutter Gauthier on Twitter and I’d like to reiterate that apology here.
It wasn’t necessarily that I said anything I didn’t believe. More accurately, I chose to express those beliefs in the most unnecessarily cruel way possible and that was wrong of me.
Of course, it would be one thing if I simply went over the top while all of my concerns were validated. That’d still be worth an apology. Instead, Cutter proved some of the accusations completely wrong… while also proving one element of what I said to be correct.
He can flip a switch, and become an entirely different–and a significantly better–hockey player.
Team USA won the Gold Medal in the 2023 World Junior Championships.
Their 1C for the tournament was Cutter Gauthier. He was voted by the attending media as the best forward in the tournament. It was a dominant performance, and yet… a different one.
Cutter scored 2 goals over 7 games. Typically, when discussing the kid’s game, it’s his shot that draws 90% of the attention. Everyone gushes over the shot.
So, the kid whose great calling card is his electric shot scored twice in 7 games? As a top-line player for the best team in the tournament? Well, that’s a weird coincidence.
In the previous World Juniors tournament, he scored four times in 7 games. That’s better, but again, it seems to fall just a bit short of the elite goal scorer who stands to light up NHL goalies with simply the threat of his shot, as though it’s Mjolnir being brought down upon their masks.
Sure, the World Championships were a step in the right direction as far as goal scoring is concerned. But to score those 7 goals in 10 games, he completely forsook every single other aspect of the game. He managed just two assists throughout the tournament. And the number of shots he took to reach that number of 7? Astronomical.
The kid in BC probably represents a decent middle ground in terms of who he is as a shooter. He’s converting at a 13% clip on an unholy and nation-leading volume. That’s undoubtedly good, but this is a league where top-end players can and have shot at a 20% clip for an entire season. Logan Cooley and Adam Fantilli both just did it, and neither–at least so far–have stepped into the NHL as an elite finisher.
BUT DEREK, I THOUGHT YOU JUST APOLOGIZED, WHY ARE YOU JUST SHITTING ON CUTTER GAUTHIER AGAIN?!
I’m not. I’m setting the stage. I’m laying the foundation for a fundamental premise. Cutter Gauthier, by all indications, will not be able to rely on his shot as he transitions to the NHL. That does not mean he’s a bad shooter. The number of players who can transition to the NHL and immediately be high-end finishers is numbered in the single digits.
And yet many players put up bonkers goal totals. 40 and 50 goal scorers don’t qualify as a guy I’m talking about. Hell, Auston Matthews wasn’t a guy who could just rely on his shot and he’s a 60-goal scorer making a serious run at 70 this year.
To say Cutter can’t just rely on the shot–as most expect he’ll be able to do–isn’t a controversial take if you look at history or data.
If you base it on his NHL equivalency scores using his production at the NTDP and the NCAA as a baseline, the results aren’t particularly thrilling. They essentially look at him as a future 50 points per 82 games forward in the middle-six. A fairly expendable player is his most likely outcome.
We don’t need to take that as gospel and perform no deeper analysis, but we can use it to surmise that the game Cutter plays in the NTDP and the NCAA is not conducive to creating a top-line player at the NHL level.
And this World Juniors performance THRILLED me. Why?
Because the Cutter that’s being measured by that data is wholly reliant on his shot! It’s everything in his game! That was the source of my consternation, which led to me expressing some very frustrated thoughts in the worst way possible. That guy in that model is an approximation of what Cutter looks like if he’s just going to rely on his shot.
Nothing special.
But this guy who showed up at the World Juniors? Well, I stopped calling him Cutter Gauthier. This guy was Cutter Nylander.
Cutter Nylander–not to be confused with Gauthier–was tied for the tournament lead in scoring. His snakebitten performance of a mere two goals didn’t deter him at all from making a massive impact in most games he played. He led the tournament in assists.
And they were hardly cheap ones. In fact, he got short-changed here.
This is a ridiculous cross-seam pass that he makes practically as soon as he touches the puck. That’s the kind of quick, dynamic read that is typically reserved for high-end NHL playmakers. And I’m pretty sure they’re still crediting Hutson with the secondary assist that should have been Cutter’s.
His abilities as a puck carrier have always been high-end. He’s a zone entry machine, even when he plays his worst hockey. There’s no reliable way to stop someone who has his blend of speed, strength, and skill when they want to enter the zone with possession.
Your best hope is that they aren’t patient on the entry. Maybe they run into a wall and surrender possession of the puck. Cutter has been known to do that a time or two. Or maybe they settle for a shot from the outside that smacks against the glass or into the goalie’s pads and essentially becomes a turnover. Cutter has been known to do that a couple dozen times when he’s not playing his best hockey.
But when he stays patient? Cutter Gauthier does things like this.
The defender plays Cutter with a wide gap. Almost any defender is going to play Cutter with a wide gap. For one thing, they won’t risk being on the butt end of his highlight reel. For another thing, he hasn’t shown the capacity to make defenses pay for doing that.
But they paid here.
Cutter attacks patiently, which is already giving his teammates time to arrive and support the play. By the time he makes his move to get by the defender, he’s all out of space at the net. Seemingly, he made a mistake and waited too long. In reality, he timed everything perfectly.
Cutter goes behind the net and turns back around while simultaneously sending a pass right to Rutger McGroaty’s tape for a nice finish in tight.
That play doesn’t happen if Cutter doesn’t challenge the defender 1 on 1, draw out the encounter enough to give McGroaty time to catch up to the play, and it surely doesn’t happen if he doesn’t have the vision and skill level required to make the feed.
That’s the thing that makes Cutter infuriating when he’s playing with goal-scoring as his only focus. He’s an extremely talented playmaker. His natural passing touch is sublime, and it complements his terrifying ability as a puck carrier.
Even just his puck-carrying ability creates playmaking opportunities.
Cutter is faced with a 1 on 1 after taking an angle that eluded 2 more. Once he’s isolated the single defender, he gets the same reaction that he always does: a wide berth. And Cutter does what he’s accustomed to doing. Wiring a shot towards the net.
The correct play was a drop pass. He didn’t see it, because he was laser-focused on the net. But it’s okay. The defender gets a stick on Cutter’s shot attempt and it effectively becomes a drop pass.
Fortescue makes a great cross-ice pass that lands on McGroaty’s tape, and the latter finishes the play. We can get to a point where Cutter expects this play and makes it intentionally.
It’s really a staple of NHL rush play.
This is Cam York activating into the play as a defenseman and playing the same role that Cutter does here. The idea is to back off the defensive layer as an individual threat driving the net, then drop the puck to a nearby support player so they can use the vacated space as a lane to make a cross-ice pass.
York is a very good defenseman at zone entries.
Cutter, however? He will create that lane far more frequently.
It isn’t just about racking up assists, and these weren’t isolated events. Look at what happens when Cutter plays this way. When he’s controlling the puck–and therefore the flow of the game–instead of waiting for someone to set him up with an opportunity to crack the plexiglass.
That’s four scoring chances created by Cutter’s line. Most of which came off of Cutter’s stick, and one of which was a golden opportunity for him to score.
That’s the thing. You don’t just make plays so that you can rack up assists. You make plays and keep the offense flowing so that the puck will eventually find you in a better spot than when you last played it.
Cutter won’t just stop scoring if he dares to consider himself a playmaker. While his shot isn’t the special weapon that will take over the league, it is a force to be reckoned with. Especially the power he can generate from that shot.
Like he did here…
That shot was so hard that the goalie lost the puck after the save. It hit him in an awkward spot, and he couldn’t adjust. So he spat up a rebound, which Cutter dove upon and tucked into the net.
The kid loves scoring goals. 8-2 game, and he’s diving for the opportunity to feel the rush of putting the puck in the net. And when I lambasted him for essentially playing unserious hockey, I didn’t properly consider a simpler explanation.
The kid just wants to score goals, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Frankly, it’s good that he won’t hesitate when he sees the opportunity. But he can’t let that desire consume him, and keep him from playing his best hockey.
Seeing the opportunity is important. It requires patience. And it’s not something that he can’t or hasn’t shown. The shot is still a weapon. It’s just a matter of how that weapon is wielded.
In one of the biggest possible moments, Cutter put it all together. Team USA is tied 2-2 with Finland, and they’re on the Power Play. A goal sends the team to the gold medal game. It’s everything Cutter wants, by any indication.
He has every reason to demand that puck, and then start launching shots from everywhere and probably beating the living shit out of the glass in the process.
But he doesn’t do that. He stays patient.
Cutter passes up on so many okay shooting opportunities that Finland legitimately stops believing he’s the primary threat. All of that passing and all of that meandering with the puck is just setting the table. When he gets the puck again for the final time, Finland isn’t prepared for him to shoot.
When Cutter steps off the wall and towards the middle of the ice, there’s no belief in Finland that he’s looking to shoot that puck. The goalie orients himself to the middle of the ice. He starts looking around the far side of the screen. He’s waiting for a shot from the bumper or the other wall.
In so doing, he opened the short side of the net. And Cutter doesn’t hesitate.
The shot is powerful. The release is quick and effortless. He slings the puck into the net, and there it is. Team USA is going for gold because Cutter stayed patient.
Cutter’s performance at the World Juniors wasn’t perfect. This wasn’t a complete display of the Cutter Gauthier that can become a 1C in the NHL. But there were more than just flashes.
I wound up incorrectly diagnosing the issue here, as I learned later. So go ahead and bask in my wrongness for the second time in this article.
But the data set still shows a massive step up in his playmaking ability. He was one of the best players in the tournament in the “expected goal buildup” data set, which is essentially a measure of how transition and playmaking that doesn’t directly precede a shot can still contribute to the offense.
Cutter was a master of the little things in this tournament. He was among the best at creating space for his linemates. His Achilles heel in this tournament was his shot selection. It was inconsistent.
It improved as the tournament went on, but that’s because it started as abysmal and got okay. But it’s a lot easier to believe he’ll improve his shot diet when the rest of his game is there like this. It’s not an easy fix by any means. But it’s possible.
The wrongness that I was referring to shows up here.
In that previous tweet which became a thread, I wrongly diagnosed the poor shot diet as making the wrong decisions when he wasn’t attacking on the rush. I thought he made the quick reads brilliantly, but when the game slowed down, he just started winging shots.
That hypothesis was proven wrong by the fact that he led the tournament in OZ puck possession time. The puck was always on his stick when the game slowed down. He led the tournament in scoring chances off of the cycle, in which every shot is not a scoring chance. So the good shots came when he slowed down. He also led the tournament in completed passes to the slot.
So, where was the failure? I think it has something to do with the “accidental” drop pass I saw earlier. Cutter just gives himself too much of a green light on the rush. When the pass there isn’t obvious, he won’t pull up and wait. He won’t attract defenders and make plays to teammates with space.
He’ll just start winging shots mid-stride, and those shots tend to be the poor ones that don’t pose a legitimate threat to the goalie. I’m not saying he can never take them. But we need to decrease the frequency.
Fortunately, he’s shown that it’s possible.
Look. What’s being asked for here is essentially a re-wiring of someone’s nervous system. Trained reactions have to be unlearned and replaced. That’s really difficult work.
Too many times in the last article I wrote about Cutter Gauthier, I implied that he wouldn’t have the will and the temerity to take that arduous road. Shame on me.
I don’t know the kid. In that way, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Rutger McGroaty does.
“I’ve been Cuts’ best friend for the past four or five years. I’m not trying to be cheesy here… but I’m so proud of him. He’s the first guy in the rink, the last guy to leave. He’s always in the shooting room. Always lifting weights. He’s always doing everything, every single day… he puts so much work in. It’s very well deserved.”
Sure. These steps of development won’t be taken by just lifting even heavier weights and spending even more time in the shooting room. But the kid works hard. He takes hockey seriously.
It’s just about getting him to focus on the right things.
The ability is there. I’ve never denied that. It’s what made me pop off at the mouth. But the World Juniors showed that the willingness to do it is there. And that can’t be ignored.
Listen to The Liberty Yell
Mandatory credit: (Getty Images)
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