Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

61

Cutter Gauthier

Mighty Ducks of Anaheim Left Wing

20 goals in his first full season at 21, on 190 shots and fourteen minutes a night.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24ANA1011+1000030.015:24
2024-25ANA82202444+82020319010.514:09
2025-26 so far
Career83202545+92020319310.414:10

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

20 goals and 24 assists in 82 games for 44 points, plus-8, on 14:09 a night — 82 games and a plus rating in a rookie season on a club that conceded 250 goals.

44.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 13th percentile, which is the whole roster’s number rather than his. 190 shots is the more interesting figure: only Frank Vatrano took more, and Gauthier did it in three fewer minutes a night.

The Finesse Game

A shooter, and a genuine one. The release is heavy and fast off the pass and he is willing to use it from anywhere, which is why a rookie in bottom-six minutes took 190 shots. 10.5 per cent conversion is unremarkable and will improve as the locations do — a third of his attempts came from beyond 30 feet.

The passing is the weaker half and always has been. 24 assists is honest, and the offence he creates is largely his own; he is not the man who makes a line work.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 205, and he goes to the net without hesitation. He is not a forechecking force yet but he takes the punishment that comes with shooting from inside the dots.

20 penalty minutes across 82 games. The durability was perfect in a first season, which is a real thing to note about a 21-year-old.

The Intangibles

A 5th overall pick who refused to sign with the club that drafted him and forced a trade here, which produced a great deal of noise and no evidence of a problem since.

20 goals as a 21-year-old rookie is the third-best mark in the organisation’s history for that age. The realistic projection is a 30-goal winger; the realistic risk is that a pure shooter on a club with no power play stays a 20-goal one.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 982 minutes

Expected goals
44.7%
13th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.9%
16th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 38 against. Expected: 37.5 and 46.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
67th
Numbers
13th

The report ranks him 54 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 315 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 982 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club
ANA took 44.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.7% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 982 minutes at five-on-five — 58th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mason McTavish42.7%46.8%42.2%
Robby Fabbri39.8%48.1%38.7%
Radko Gudas43.6%45.3%47.0%

42.7% together, 46.8% for him apart and 42.2% for McTavish apart. He was better away from McTavish, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost McTavish.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

299 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 21% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.