MONTRÉAL — After a historically bad season, the Philadelphia Flyers earned a top-five draft pick. On Thursday, they used it to bring in a young talent, selecting power forward Cutter Gauthier with the fifth overall pick.
Gauthier, who has been a part of the U.S. National Team Development Program (U.S. NTDP,) brings size, versatility and a scoring touch to an organization that lacked all three of those things last season.
At 6-foot-3 and 194 pounds, the 18-year-old Gauthier is already bigger than all but four of the Flyers’ forwards (Sean Couturier, Kevin Hayes, James van Riemsdyk, and Zack MacEwen are the only ones who top him in height and weight). The Flyers have emphasized that they want to become “harder to play against,” and one way to do that is to get bigger and stronger. Gauthier told The Inquirer at the NHL combine that he plays his best hockey when he uses his size.
In the past, Gauthier has played both center and left wing. He plans to play center next season at Boston College, and center is an area where the Flyers badly lack organizational depth. However, his ability to play on the wing will help if the Flyers have another season full of injuries like this past one.
This past season, Gauthier played 54 games with the NTDP and finished second on the team in goals with 34. He also had 31 assists for a total of 65 points. While scoring is much more difficult at the NHL level, Gauthier is among an elite group of players, like Auston Mathews and Cole Caufield, who have scored more than 30 goals in a season with the NTDP. If he continues to develop, he would be a major asset to a Flyers team that didn’t have a single 30-goal scorer in 82 games. Van Riemsdyk led the way with 24 goals, followed by Cam Atkinson who had 23.
During his interview with The Inquirer at the combine, Gauthier listed his shot, his skating ability, and his hockey IQ as his best traits, which both Dan Marr, the director of NHL Central Scouting, and Logan Cooley, his linemate with the NTDP, confirmed. He showed off his athleticism with top-10 finishes in five tests at the combine, including the 5-10-5-yard shuttle run (4.46 seconds), the Wingate mean power output (11.6 watts/kg) and peak power output (combine-best 18.3 watts/kg), the standing long jump (112.0 inches), and consecutive pull-ups (15).
Although Gauthier grew up in Arizona and currently lives in Michigan, he has connections to the Flyers organization through both of his parents. His father, Sean Gauthier, was a goalie for the Reading Royals for one season and also played in the Florida Panthers organization when Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher was an assistant general manager. His mother, Kim, is from Reading, and Gauthier spent summers in the area.
At No. 5, Gauthier is the Flyers’ highest draft pick since Nolan Patrick was selected No. 2 overall in the 2017 draft.
Gauthier plans to continue his development next season by playing for Boston College, where Hayes, Atkinson and Patrick Brown also played their college hockey.
