Cutter Gauthier trade: Why the Flyers did it, who they got back, and what it means

On Monday night the Flyers hosted the rival Pittsburgh Penguins at the Wells Fargo Center. But minutes into the game, all eyes turned from the ice to social media, as the Flyers announced on X, formerly Twitter, that they had traded prized prospect Cutter Gauthier to the Anaheim Ducks in what, at least at first, seemed like a shocking move.

Here’s everything you need to know about the trade, why the Flyers elected to move one of their top prospects, and what they got back in return.

» READ MORE: Trade grades: Evaluating the Cutter Gauthier-Jamie Drysdale deal

In return for Gauthier, who was the No. 5 overall pick in the 2022 draft, the Flyers received 21-year-old defenseman Jamie Drysdale and a 2025 second-round pick.

While on the surface the trade came as a complete shock, it soon trickled out that Gauthier didn’t want to play for the Flyers and thus pretty much tied the organization’s hands.

General manager Danny Brière confirmed this on Monday night when talking with the media:

“He didn’t want to be a Flyer or didn’t want to be in Philadelphia. It was time to make it happen. It goes back. [Gauthier’s camp] told us when he came back from the World Championship last May.”

The Flyers would have held Gauthier’s rights for another two seasons. They could have called the youngster’s bluff to see if he would have returned to Boston College for two more seasons and then not signed in 2026 when eligible to get out of his obligation to the Flyers. They would have received a compensatory second-round pick if he had chosen not to sign.

However, if word leaked Gauthier didn’t want to be here that would have taken away all of the Flyers’ leverage and likely have lessened the return. The Flyers elected to move on while Gauthier’s value was high and after a final effort to talk with the player’s camp last week at the World Junior Championship in Sweden was rebuffed.

Brière thanked the several other teams the Flyers talked to about Gauthier for keeping their word about his displeasure with the team a secret.

In short, we don’t know yet. Gauthier has yet to speak and Brière admitted that the Flyers “never got an answer” as to why Gauthier “changed his mind” and decided he didn’t want to play for the organization.

Reading between the lines, it could have been any number of reasons. One theory is that Gauthier wanted to turn pro last spring following his freshman season at BC and that the Flyers pushed him to go back to school to continue his development. This would have been understandable on the Flyers’ end, as signing Gauthier wouldn’t have aligned with the team’s long-term approach and timeline.

Another is that he may not have wanted to play for John Tortorella, although Gauthier said on a podcast last April that he was excited to play for the notoriously demanding head coach.

Until Gauthier or someone close to him speaks, we can only try and guess what went into the soon-to-be 20-year-old’s decision.

“Well, it was a long time coming, it’s been it’s been going on for a while,” Brière revealed. “We tried to give him space. We tried to get in touch with him many times they would not communicate as far as the Gauthier side.

“He looked at us at the draft and told us he was built to be a Flyer and wanted to be a Flyer and a few months later told us that he didn’t want to be a Flyer or didn’t want to play for the Flyers.”

With that context from Brière, it sounds as if things broke down between the Flyers and the Gauthier camp between March and May of 2023. Gauthier played his final game of his freshman season at BC on March 11 and was announced as a member of Team USA’s World Championship team on May 4. According to Brière, it was after the World Championship, which ended on May 28, that Gauthier’s camp told the Flyers he didn’t want to play for them. Gauthier scored seven goals in 10 games at that tournament as one of the two teenagers on the U.S. team.

Did Gauthier think he was ready and should have been turning pro? This is what Gauthier said at his draft night regarding his development timeline:

“I think one year in the NCAA and then I’ll be ready to play in the National Hockey League and help the Philadelphia Flyers win the Stanley Cup in the near future.”

Gauthier then skipped Flyers development camp this past July citing “too much hockey” after playing a full collegiate season and going to the World Championship. He also turned down several attempts from The Inquirer to be interviewed for feature stories dating back to last spring. Now we have a good inkling as to why.

The final straw came last week when Brière and team president Keith Jones traveled to Sweden for the World Junior Championship to try and meet with Gauthier one more time. That meeting was never granted by Gauthier and his people. Gauthier helped the U.S. win the gold medal, leading the tournament in scoring with 12 points (two goals, 10 assists) on the way to being named the tournament’s top forward.

Yes and no. It is similar in that both players never signed or suited up for the team that drafted them. It is much different in terms of the timeline of each player’s decision and the magnitude of the deal.

Lindros made it clear leading into the 1991 draft that he would never play for Québec. While there was speculation this was due to Québec being a small French market and the organization’s unstable footing, in 2016, Lindros said it was purely due to the presence of Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut. Québec still drafted him which led to Lindros being traded a year later to Philadephia in one of the biggest trades in NHL history.

Lindros was also considered a generational prospect who had been dubbed “The Next One” as a young prodigy. Gauthier is a highly-regarded prospect league-wide but nowhere near the realm of Lindros at this stage of their careers.

» READ MORE: Trading Cutter Gauthier is the Flyers’ first big setback in their rebuild

Blake Wheeler and Jack Johnson’s situations are probably the most recent comparables to Gauthier’s. Wheeler was the No. 5 pick in 2004 by Arizona but did not sign and later chose to sign with Boston as a free agent after a four-year collegiate career at Minnesota. Johnson, the No. 3 pick by Carolina in 2005, chose not to sign with the Hurricanes after his freshman year at Michigan and was later traded to Los Angeles. Kevin Hayes, Adam Fox, and Jimmy Vesey are three other recent high-profile examples of players who did not sign with the team that drafted them.

Drysdale is a 21-year-old defenseman from Toronto, who was selected with the No. 6 pick in the 2020 draft. A smooth-skating puck-mover, the 5-foot-11, 185-pounder was extremely well-regarded entering his draft year following a highly productive two-year spell with the OHL’s Erie Otters. He also played a leading role for Canada at two different World Juniors, winning a gold medal in 2020 and a silver in 2021.

“He’s a brilliant skater, capable of quarterbacking a power play with ease and generating results both ways through the neutral zone,” Elite Prospects said of Drysdale ahead of his draft year. “More of a playmaker than a shooter, Drysdale is adaptable first and foremost. He’s going to make the best decision regardless, no matter the situation. He’s the only defenceman in this year’s draft with clear No. 1 defenceman upside.”

The Flyers hope that Drysdale develops into the top-pairing, right-shot blueliner they have long coveted, and Brière said they see him being that for a long time. If Drysdale hits on his potential the Flyers may have their No. 1 defenseman and a player who can eat up major minutes and lead from the back offensively.

Given Drysdale’s last 12 months have been marred by injuries, it is easy to forget that he put up 32 points (four goals, 28 assists) in 2021-22 as a 19-year-old in the NHL. Overall, Drysdale has eight goals and 37 assists in 123 NHL games with a plus-minus rating of minus-43. It should be noted that Drysdale played on a really young and bad Ducks team so it is hard to take much stock in his defensive numbers. Rounding out his defensive play will be the next step for him with the Flyers.

Drysdale skated Tuesday at the Flyers Training Facility in Voorhees. He could debut as early as Wednesday night as the Flyers host the Montreal Canadiens (7 p.m., NBCSP).

Drysdale is in the first year of a three-year, $6.9 million contract he signed this October after a lengthy holdout. He will be a restricted free agent at the expiration of the deal and could be due a major pay raise after taking a bridge deal on this contract due to injury concerns.

The biggest question mark with Drysdale is health. The young defenseman played in just eight games last season before suffering a torn labrum in his left shoulder in October. This season, Drysdale has skated in just 10 of the Ducks’ 39 games. He returned to action in late December after missing two months due to a lower-body injury.

The Flyers said that their doctors were comfortable with Drysdale’s medicals and that they waited to make the trade until he was back playing to see that he was healthy again.

The Flyers draft cupboard is pretty loaded following a busy few years of wheeling and dealing. The Orange and Black are likely to have two first-round picks and potentially two seconds in June’s draft.

In addition to their own first, Florida’s first-rounder from the Claude Giroux trade will convey if it is outside the top 10. The Panthers are currently 12 points ahead of Arizona who would hold the No. 10 overall pick if the season ended today. Meanwhile, Columbus can choose whether to send their second-round pick to the Flyers from the Ivan Provorov trade either this year or next. Given Columbus has the fifth-worst record in the NHL, they probably would be better served delaying the pick until 2025. The Flyers’ other second-round pick (No. 51) is a compensatory one for electing not to sign former first-round pick Jay O’Brien. The Flyers will have one pick in the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh rounds, and two in the sixth after trading Hayes to St. Louis.

The second-round pick the Flyers acquired Monday in the Gauthier trade could be a high one as Anaheim is still rebuilding. The Flyers currently hold at least one pick in every round in 2025, and have at least two seconds (maybe three with Columbus’ pick) and two fifths (Carolina’s from the David Kase deal). The Flyers also have assets — Sean Walker, Nick Seeler, Morgan Frost — they could potentially move before this year’s deadline to add further picks.

We won’t know for sure for several years, but on paper, the Flyers gave up the better prospect in the deal in Gauthier. A 6-foot-3, 190-pound forward blessed with a cannon of a shot, Gauthier has the tools to one day become a 30- to 40-goal guy at the NHL level, regardless of whether he is ultimately a center or a winger. He has dominated at every level and tournament he’s played in since the Flyers drafted him and would have fit a glaring need on a team that struggles to score goals.

» READ MORE: Matvei Michkov headlines the Flyers' top-5 prospects after the 2023 NHL draft

On the other side of the coin, he didn’t want to be here and in return, the Flyers are getting another highly-touted prospect in Drysdale at the premium position of right-shot defense. They also bring back an additional asset in a second-round pick that will likely fall in the top 40 in 2025. If Drysdale develops into a top-pair, offensive defenseman, which his talent suggests he is capable of doing, then this won’t be as much of a setback as it looks on Jan. 9, 2024. Drysdale also can help the NHL team right away, particularly on the power play, and could make it easier for the Flyers to trade a blueliner like Walker or Seeler and recoup additional prospects and picks before the March 8 deadline.

But while the Flyers are excited about Drysdale, their first choice would have been to hold onto Gauthier, who there was widespread excitement about it. As Mike Sielski wrote, Monday’s deal felt like a bit of a blow to the rebuild. How big a blow will largely hinge on Drysdale’s health.

The former Flyers forward’s name was dragged into the social media discussion on Monday night, as Anthony SanFilippo said on the Snow the Goalie podcast that after talking with somebody in the organization “Kevin Hayes’ fingerprints are all over this.”

Gauthier had revealed months earlier that he and Hayes had gotten close and had talked about the Flyers due to their Boston College connections. Hayes vehemently denied any connection to Gauthier’s decision and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he texted Brière on Monday night to tell him he never said anything bad about Tortorella or the organization.

“It’s completely false. One hundred percent false,” Hayes said. “I don’t know where he got that information from. I took that kid golfing once.”

“Yeah, I think it’s complete [expletive], honestly. I think those two guys [on Snow The Goalie] acted like complete pieces of [expletive], to be honest, making [expletive] up. Now, I’m going to bed and waking up with death threats and people want my family dead and people that are happy that my brother’s dead. I think it’s completely insane that this guy can say something like that.”

The Flyers traded Hayes to the Blues in July after his role diminished over the second half of the season under Tortorella.

“I don’t know Cutter from a hole in a wall, Tortorella said Monday after the Flyers’ 4-1 loss to the Penguins. “I’m not too interested in talking about it. I’d rather talk about Jamie. He’s the one coming here.”

When asked about Gauthier not wanting to play in Philadelphia, Tortorella replied: “Then we don’t want you.”