Cutter Gauthier Scores Back-to-Back Hat Tricks, a First in Ducks History

There is hot, and then there is whatever Cutter Gauthier is doing right now. The Anaheim Ducks winger scored a hat trick in Vancouver on Tuesday night, three goals in a 5-4 win over the Canucks — two nights after he scored a hat trick against Ottawa. Nobody in Ducks history had ever scored hat tricks in back-to-back games. Gauthier, 22 years old, just did it before the first week of November was out.

The three goals in Vancouver were a clinic in how Anaheim's power play is currently breaking teams. Mikael Granlund opened the scoring on the power play at 4:04 of the first period, Liam Ohgren tied it on a Vancouver power play two minutes later, and then Gauthier went to work from his office — the left circle. At 17:07 he one-timed a Beckett Sennecke pass from the goal line far side past Kevin Lankinen's glove. Leo Carlsson scored short-handed early in the second, Linus Karlsson pulled Vancouver back within one, and at 18:25 Gauthier one-timed another Sennecke feed over the glove for 4-2. The hat trick finished at 4:11 of the third, a catch-and-release wrist shot off a rush pass from — who else — Sennecke, and Anaheim led 5-2. Jake DeBrusk scored twice in the third to make Rogers Arena nervous, but Laurent Brossoit's 19 saves held the line. The revenge was real, too: a week earlier, Vancouver's only win in 14 games had come against these Ducks, in Anaheim, in a game the Ducks led 5-2 in the third period.

Sunday is where this started. Ottawa led 3-0 after the first period at Honda Center, and Gauthier started Anaheim's six-goal comeback early in the second, tied the game late in the second, then scored two power-play goals 36 seconds apart early in the third — at 1:50 on a five-on-three and 2:26 on the five-on-four — to complete that hat trick in a 6-3 win. Add a two-goal game against Buffalo last Thursday and the arithmetic gets silly: eight goals in three games, six of them on the power play, after a nine-game stretch without a single goal. Per The Sporting Tribune, he is the first player age 22 or younger with eight goals in three games since Patrik Laine in 2018, and just the second since Teemu Selanne in 1993. He has scored in only four games this season and every one of them has been a multi-goal game; he is the second Duck ever with three straight multi-goal games, after Paul Kariya in 2000-01. The only other NHL player with back-to-back hat tricks this season is Florida's Brady Tkachuk.

The power play is the engine, and right now it is running at a level the league almost never sees. Anaheim went 3-for-3 in Vancouver and has converted 10 of 12 chances across the three-game run. The Ducks are the 10th team in NHL history to score three power-play goals in three straight games — the first since the then-Mighty Ducks did it in March 2006 — and their 10 power-play goals in three games are the most since the 2008-09 Minnesota Wild. Gauthier personally is the first player in NHL history with multiple power-play goals in three consecutive games, and his eight power-play goals lead the league. Defenses know the one-timer from the left circle is coming. Knowing has not helped.

Sennecke deserves his own paragraph. The 20-year-old assisted on all three Gauthier goals and added a fourth assist on Granlund's opener — a career-high four-assist night that, at 20 years and 279 days, makes him the youngest player in Ducks history to record one, passing Ryan Getzlaf. Jackson LaCombe's assist in the game stretched his assist streak to eight games, tied for the second-longest by a Ducks defenseman. This is what the Ducks were betting on when they signed Gauthier to a six-year, $81 million extension before the season: a young core that scores in waves. At 7-7-1, with 29 goals in their last five games, the waves are arriving.

One honest caveat: the power play will not convert at 83 percent forever, and Vancouver is a 3-13-1 team in free fall. But hat tricks in consecutive games are not a shooting-percentage mirage — they are a player arriving, on the record, in the history books of his franchise. The Canadian trip continues Thursday in Edmonton, against a team that gives up chances. Nobody in Anaheim is asking Gauthier to cool off.