Flyers traitor Cutter Gauthier is worse than J.D. Drew, Scott Rolen, Carson Wentz, and Ben Simmons

Cutter Gauthier might have been Philadelphia’s next hockey hero. A Bobby Clarke. Bernie Parent. Bill Barber. Instead, he chose to be the next Philly villain. A J.D. Drew. Scott Rolen. Carson Wentz. Ben Simmons.

All of the aforementioned unpopular athletes, fairly or not, demonized themselves by dissing Philly. None leveled more disrespect than Gauthier. Drew offered fair warning, and the other three gave the city their all for a while. Gauthier gave the Flyers and the city absolutely nothing.

Gauthier is a big, fast forward at Boston College who projected to be the Flyers’ best left wing since John LeClair. It seemed a perfect marriage. Gauthier told the team he was “built to be a Flyer” when it used the No. 5 pick on him in July 2022.

He turned out to be a lame Duck.

Gauthier decided in the months after he was drafted that he didn’t want to play for the Flyers after all. It’s understandable, if unforgivable. He was a teenager with the world at his feet when he was drafted. Then, new coach John Tortorella had a tumultuous first season. Ownership overhauled the front office and Flyers legends like Clarke, Barber, and Paul Holmgren were pushed out. The men who drafted him were replaced with general manager Danny Brière, president Keith Jones, and governor Dan Hilferty, first-timers with spurious credentials. Gauthier’s BC buddy, Kevin Hayes, had a bad time of it with Torts and was traded to St. Louis in June.

The Flyers moved fast. Faced with Gauthier staying in school for two more years, becoming a free agent, and leaving them with a second-round pick as compensation, they traded Gauthier to the Anaheim Ducks for damaged-goods defenseman Jamie Drysdale, who is 21, and a second-round pick. It’s much better than nothing, but it’s nowhere near how good the kid’s going to be.

This isn’t Hayes’ fault, or the old front office’s fault, or the new front office’s fault, or even Tortorella’s fault. This is Cutter Gauthier’s fault.

God help him when he visits Philly in the future.

Just ask the other guys.

Before the 1997 draft, Drew and his agent, Scott Boras, told baseball team executives not to draft the Florida State outfielder unless they were willing to pay him a $10 million bonus, about four times the conventional number. The Detroit Tigers had the No. 1 pick, respected Boras’ demand, and drafted pitcher Matt Anderson. The Phillies thought Boras was bluffing, drafted Drew with the No. 2 pick, and failed to sign him. He went No. 5 overall to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998 and got $7 million.

Then it got ugly.

In August 1999, Drew made his first visit to Veterans Stadium. He sat out the first game of the series and wore a teammate’s jersey that night to hide from the ire. Even the Phillie Phanatic got in on the act: Between innings, he left two trash bags with large dollar signs on them outside the Cardinals’ dugout. That was nothing.

In the second game, eight fans were arrested for throwing objects at Drew as he played right field. Those objects included batteries. Drew was removed from the game in the eighth inning by manager Tony La Russa for his own safety.

Things never got much better for Drew in Philly.

Still, this was not his fault; it was the Phillies’. Drew warned the Phillies and the rest of MLB to not draft him if they didn’t want to pay him.

Gauthier issued no such warning.

Rolen won Rookie of the Year in 1997 and three Gold Gloves at third base with the Phillies by the end of 2001. He played hard and well and was due for a big contract extension, but he’d been in the organization for nine years and he didn’t trust that, after lavishing money on him, the penny-pinching club would continue to pay top players top money. He insisted that he have opt-outs in his contract if, in the future, he believed the team wasn’t spending as he wished. Otherwise, he said, trade me. The Phillies spent the next three months assassinating his character, then, finally traded him to the Cardinals. At that point, Rolen was innocent.

That innocence ended almost immediately when Rolen told ESPN, when asked for his reaction hearing about the trade: “I felt as if I’d died and gone to heaven.”

That was dumb, but honest. He was a Midwestern kid returning home delirious at the prospect of playing for a top-tier team, but his words — uttered with venom, unrepentant for decades — cast him as a über-villain in Philly for 20 years. He made his bed, and there he lay. Rolen was booed mercilessly in every at-bat for the rest of his Hall of Fame career.

Even so, Rolen was the Phillies’ best player for five full years.

Gauthier wasn’t the Flyers’ best player for five full minutes.

In April 2020, the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts to serve as Wentz’s long-term backup. Wentz had been injured each of his four previous seasons, as well as in college, and the Birds wanted low-cost insurance. Hurts, a double threat and the Heisman Trophy runner-up at Oklahoma as a senior, also could act as an occasional gadget-play option.

However, Wentz was so insecure and delusional that he took offense to the pick and saw Hurts as a threat. Wentz’s play spiraled downward. He ultimately was benched in Game 12, when, on the sideline, he began to plot his escape. He demanded a trade at the end of the season.

The problem: The Eagles had signed Wentz to a $128 million contract extension in June 2019 that didn’t kick in until 2021. They’d paid him $40 million in cash. When they eventually traded him, they took a $34 million cap hit in a year when the salary cap decreased by $15 million.

» READ MORE: Carson Wentz admits he planned his Eagles exit as soon as he was benched | Marcus Hayes

Wentz took money he didn’t earn and left his team in the lurch. He has not played in a game in Philadelphia since, perhaps in answer to his well-publicized prayers.

But Wentz is no Gauthier. Wentz gave the Eagles five seasons of service. For the most part, he played well, and he’d played hurt, and he played hard.

Gauthier hasn’t played at all.

Briefly: Simmons was a point guard who wouldn’t shoot, which hurt the team, and Philly hated that, so he wanted out. Weird, yes, but that’s the way it was.

A huge, athletic, savvy point guard, Simmons had the misfortune of playing in an era in which spacing and three-point shooting are mandatory. Simmons’ shot was ugly, and, vain and sensitive, he was ashamed of it. Over four seasons with the Sixers he attempted just 34 threes in 275 regular-season games. In 34 playoff games, he attempted just two.

Ironically, it was Simmons’ refusal to convert a wide-open dunk — the best of his meager offensive weapons — late in Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinal that led to his departure. Scared of getting fouled and missing free throws (he stunk at that, too), Simmons passed the ball, a play that led to a loss. Both teammate Joel Embiid and coach Doc Rivers were critical of Simmons postgame, so Simmons began a months-long pout.

He never played another minute for the Sixers. He held out of the 2021-22 season, first citing back problems, then citing mental health issues — issues that miraculously disappeared as soon as he was traded to the Brooklyn Nets in February 2022. Simmons returned to Philly the next month but did not play in that game, though Sixers fans roundly booed him as he sat on the bench in street clothes. He finally played a game in Philly in November 2022, and he was ridden mercilessly.

However, like Wentz, Simmons played as hard as he could for years before he forced his way out of Philly. Also, after he refused to shoot, especially in crunch time, Philly as a city was as done with Simmons as he was with Philly. More than anything, the holdout soured Philadelphians on Simmons: that he chose to not play for false reasons, and that he insisted on getting paid nonetheless.

At least the Flyers never paid Gauthier a cent.