Cutter Gauthier keeps turning every night into a scoring showcase, and the Ducks keep riding the wave.
The 22-year-old left wing scored the winner Friday in Calgary, stretching his goal streak to five games and helping Anaheim knock off the Flames 5-3. Gauthier has now scored in five straight, and his latest burst has put him in rare company: he became the seventh player in the last 30 years to pile up 10 goals across a five-game span. Auston Matthews was the last to do it in 2023-24, with Connor McDavid, Mika Zibanejad, Patrik Laine, Filip Forsberg and Pavel Bure also on that list.
“Just keeping it simple and shooting the puck,” said Gauthier. “The more times you shoot the puck, the odds of it going in are more in your favour, so keep it pretty simple. Shoot it.”
He’s made that approach look awfully easy. After a two-goal night against Buffalo on Oct.
29, Gauthier followed with a hat trick at home against Ottawa last Sunday, then another three-goal game in Vancouver on Tuesday to open Anaheim’s Western Canada trip. He added a goal Thursday in Edmonton, and after Friday’s winner he has 12 goals in 16 games this season.
“He just knows where to go and the puck finds him a little bit,” said Ducks coach Joel Quenneville. “He doesn’t need much of an opportunity to score, but he’s got a great shot. When he gets hot, they find a way.”
Leo Carlsson wasn’t exactly shocked by the run.
“I’m not really surprised,” said teammate Leo Carlsson. “He’s just a goal-scoring machine. Every time he gets in those opportunities, he’s going to score.”
Anaheim needed a comeback to get there. Calgary carried a 3-2 lead into the third period, but Carlsson tied it just 55 seconds in on the power play. Then Gauthier finished the job with 1:34 left, wiring a one-timer from the top of the faceoff circle after a cross-ice feed from Mikael Granlund.
“They changed and Jackson (Lacombe) made a great heads-up play to give us an odd-man rush,’ Gauthier said. “(Beckett Sennecke) made a nice pass to draw some coverage and (Granlund) had the seam pass and made my job pretty easy.”
The Ducks have now won four straight, and Gauthier has scored the game-winner in three of those victories.
Anaheim’s offense is humming. The Ducks became the first team since Mario Lemieux and the 1991-92 Penguins to score five goals in seven straight games.
The concern, though, is still the other end. Calgary scored three times on 11 shots to build that early 3-1 cushion, and Quenneville made a change in goal to start the second period, replacing Lukas Dostal with Ville Husso.
The move worked. Husso shut the Flames down the rest of the way, facing only 10 shots. His biggest stop came on Matt Coronato midway through the second, when Coronato was alone in front on a power play and Husso kicked out the pad save to keep it a one-goal game.
“I didn’t like the way we were playing across the board. So it was one of those nights where (you say), ‘Hey, let’s go, change it up,'” said Quenneville.
The coach said Husso settled things immediately.
“He came in, made two big saves for us, real big, right off the bat,” said Quenneville. “He looked square, confident, and settled.”
There were plenty of other Ducks filling up the scoresheet, too. Carlsson added an assist and has points in seven straight games, totaling 4-11-15.
LaCombe also had an assist and is on a nine-game point streak at 0-13-13. Luneau extended his point streak to seven games at 3-7-10, while Sennecke picked up two assists and has nine points, including 2-7-9, over his last three games.
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