When news of the Flyers’ shocking trade of Cutter Gauthier dropped on Monday night, there was a lot to take in and really not a lot of information to go along with other than the basic facts (who was traded where) and the follow-up reporting that Gauthier explicitly did not want to sign with the Philadelphia Flyers. I had a lot of thoughts at the time, but there was a lot more that it felt like we still didn’t know.
About 24 hours later, we got a bit of reporting that helps us put some of these pieces together. And for whatever you think about the trade, it’s a huge deal that brings tons to think about across the Flyers’ franchise as they now continue their rebuild without the guy who was their second-best prospect.
With all of that said, below is a full-on brain dump of my thoughts on this. These are mostly about the trade itself and its immediate aftermath; tomorrow, we’ll have a bit more about what it means for this team the rest of this season and in the future.
1. OK, so: what the hell? Set aside the shock that came with the Flyers casually dropping this news four or so minutes into a game against their cross-state rivals, news that sure seems like it came out of nowhere given that no local or national insider hinted at it happening right up until the moment it happened. Before we really dive into the why and so-what of all this, it is worth noting how rare trades like last night’s are. With the understanding that not all top-5 picks are created equal, guys picked as high as Cutter Gauthier just … don’t get traded this soon.
By my unofficial hand-count, since the 2000 draft, only 10 times did a team draft a player in the top 5 and then trade or lose via offer sheet said player within three years (i.e. before the player’s draft + 4 year begins). But even of that list, most of those guys had some NHL run — six of those 10 players (Kirby Dach, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Noah Hanifin, Tyler Seguin, Nino Niederreiter, and Phil Kessel) were dealt three whole years after making their NHL debuts, and all of those guys except Niederreiter were dealt at the end of their entry-level contracts. And of the other four, three of them (Seth Jones, Alexander Svitov, and Raffi Torres) were dealt during their third year after being drafted, and they had all accumulated some NHL time as well.
In a twist of irony, purely from a type-of-trade perspective, the only other top-5 pick this century that was traded this close to their draft year was featured what is probably the last Flyers trade that was as much of a total shock as this one: Brayden Schenn, who spent two years after being drafted by Los Angeles in the WHL before going to Philadelphia (along with Wayne Simmonds and a second-round pick) for Mike Richards. Apparently the Flyers are just destined to be involved in every unprecedented prospect trade.
(Note: the above figures do not include Blake Wheeler, who was picked 5th overall by Arizona, refused to sign with them, and became a free agent after four years, as Gauthier was apparently willing to do.)
2. With that out of the way: why the hell? More spefically in this particular point, why the hell did it come to this for the player, who we now know had so little interest in signing with Philadelphia that he had cut off communication with the team?
Continue reading…
