The Anaheim Ducks signed restricted free-agent forward Cutter Gauthier to a six-year, $81 million contract on Tuesday, resolving the lingering contractual issue with their leading goal scorer.<\/p>\n
Gauthier, 22, had reached the end of his three-year entry-level contract. His new deal has an average annual value of $13.5 million, which now ranks second on the Ducks behind Leo Carlsson\u2019s $18 million AAV. The new contract will expire after the 2031-32 season and features $69 million in signing bonuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are pleased to get Cutter signed to a long-term deal and have him in camp on time,\u201d Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said in a statement. \u201cHe\u2019s a major part of our young core, a pure goal-scoring talent that will continue progressing into an elite NHL player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gauthier enjoyed a breakout 2025-26 season with a team-high 41 goals, more than double his rookie total. The former product of the United States National Team Development Program and NCAA standout at Boston College also had 28 assists for a team-high 69 points. He became only the fourth player in Ducks franchise history to reach 40 goals in a season, following Paul Kariya, Corey Perry and Teemu Sel\u00e4nne.<\/p>\n
Which next gen superstars jumped the highest in the NHL player tiers?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very exciting day for my family and I,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cI\u2019m so pleased to be able to sign long-term with the Ducks and be part of what I believe is a great future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agreement between the Ducks and Gauthier is the second-richest in franchise history and comes two months after the team matched the five-year, $90 million offer sheet Carlsson originally signed with the Philadelphia Flyers to retain their franchise center. The Ducks now have their top two offensive stars going forward.<\/p>\n
Carlsson\u2019s industry-shaking offer sheet isn\u2019t the only deal that has reset the market. San Jose Sharks star Macklin Celebrini eclipsed the Carlsson contract with a five-year extension worth $94 million set to begin in 2027-28, giving him the NHL\u2019s biggest contract in terms of average annual salary until Colorado Avalanche superstar defenseman Cale Makar topped it with a record-shattering eight-year, $163.2 million ($20.4 million AAV) extension last month.<\/p>\n
Gauthier was set to cash in after his second full NHL season, especially with the league\u2019s salary cap rising to $104 million (an $8.5 million increase) for the 2026-27 season and top RFAs seeking massive second contracts.<\/p>\n
Mostly a winger who can play center, Gauthier didn\u2019t figure to reach those financial heights in his contract. But his deal could serve as a comparison for other top young twentysomething goal-scoring forwards who emerge as featured players on their rookie contracts. The sharpshooting forward cemented himself as a core player in Anaheim\u2019s roster and future.<\/p>\n
The Ducks ended a seven-year playoff drought this spring with a trip to the second round. Gauthier is part of a core \u2014 with Carlsson, winger Beckett Sennecke, defenseman Jackson LaCombe and others \u2014 that Anaheim is building around. But the contracts for Carlsson, Gauthier and defenseman Pavel Mintyukov proved more exorbitant than the Ducks originally hoped and ate up the cap space they had entering the summer.<\/p>\n
The Ducks\u2019 available cap space and inability to lock Carlsson up well before his contract expired left general manager Pat Verbeek open to the daring offer sheet tendered by Flyers counterpart Daniel Bri\u00e8re. Gauthier\u2019s price went up, but Verbeek avoided the difficulty he\u2019s had in past talks with other RFAs, such as now-former Ducks Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale and Mason McTavish.<\/p>\n
All eyes were on Gauthier after a January 2024 trade from Philadelphia, which drafted him at No. 5 in 2022. But Gauthier told the Flyers he did not intend to sign with them, so they traded his rights to Anaheim for Drysdale and a 2025 second-round draft pick. Gauthier signed with the Ducks three months later, when his college career at BC ended.<\/p>\n
Gauthier has also won gold medals with the U.S. at the World Junior Championship and World Championships.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next for Gauthier under this contract?<\/p>\n
Gauthier could struggle to live up to the enormity of this deal. Or he could set himself up for something even greater \u2014 provided the salary cap continues to rise when this contract is near expiration \u2014 if he uses last season as a launching point to become one of the game\u2019s feared goal scorers.<\/p>\n
What cannot be questioned about Gauthier in his two full seasons with Anaheim is his reputation as a shooter. There is no begging him to let pucks fly more instead of passing up opportunities. As a rookie, Gauthier was second on the Ducks with 190 shots on goal. That total increased to 285 last year, which ranked sixth among all NHL players. Gauthier amassed 559 shot attempts, even though he often played on Anaheim\u2019s third line in five-on-five play and was fifth among forwards in power-play time.<\/p>\n
Gauthier shot 14.4 percent last season. It isn\u2019t an outrageous number that shows he\u2019s bound for regression. Could he have less puck luck? Sure, but let\u2019s say he shoots 11 percent in 2026-27. If he has 285 shots, that\u2019s still 31 goals. But he\u2019s got the volume and shot-making ability to rack up more 40-goal seasons under the contract. Is it out of line to suggest that he could join some illustrious names as the only 50-goal scorers in franchise history? A season where he has 300 shots and 17 percent shooting (and two more games on the schedule) is very doable.<\/p>\n
What shouldn\u2019t be forgotten is that he can play center. He hasn\u2019t been needed there since being with Anaheim, and there is an argument that he makes more of an impact on the wing, but he played in the middle at Boston College and in his development phase while in the NTDP. Shooting the puck is his forte, but he does have play-making acumen.<\/p>\n
Mikael Granlund was the Ducks\u2019 second-line center last season when Mason McTavish didn\u2019t grab the job as Anaheim hoped. Top prospect Roger McQueen could be in line for the 2C job, but it\u2019s likely he\u2019ll spend a good chunk of time in 2026-27 at the AHL level. The Ducks could entertain the possibility of playing Gauthier at center behind Carlsson and either push Granlund to the wing or the third line, but they could also leave well enough alone and let their goal scorer feast. Especially if he\u2019s teamed with Carlsson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Anaheim Ducks signed restricted free-agent forward Cutter Gauthier to a six-year, $81 million contract on Tuesday, resolving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404],"class_list":["post-465345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}