Ducks Notebook: Cutter's Cap Collection, Brossoit Stands Tall, Burke to the Hall

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Cutter Gauthier’s goal-scoring pace is on such an unreal trajectory over the last week that the man himself can barely believe it.

“Not really, no,” Gauthier said after his third hat trick in five games on Sunday. “I mean, I'm just shooting the puck. They're going, so I'm just gonna keep shooting.”

The 22-year-old Ducks winger has said he’s a volume shooter and that he creates offense by either scoring the goals or setting up teammates with rebounds and netfront chaos.

With the evidence of the last week–in which he was named the NHL’s First Star of the Week with eight goals and 10 points in four games–Gauthier shouldn’t give up shooting the puck anytime soon.

After scoring just two goals in his first 11 games, Gauthier has racked up a ridiculous 13 goals in his last six games, which has just piled time- and game-specific record after record after record. So many, that it wasn’t prudent to fill up last night’s game story with all that copy.

That’s where we come to today’s Ducks Notebook to chronicle Cutter’s cavalcade of stats, look into Laurent Brossoit’s most confident game in his first week in the Ducks crease and honor former Ducks general manager Brian Burke’s induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame:

Cutter’s Cap Collection

In the live stat updates that NHL public relations puts together for the media, Cutter Gauthier had 12 unique notes on his performance alone for his third hat trick in five games. In the Ducks’ postgame media email, there were five entire paragraphs detailing Gauthier’s historic hot streak.

I’ll try to distill them down or skip the hyper-specific ones–first NHL player with three hat tricks in the first 10 days of a calendar month? What’re we doing here?

Here we go, starting with team-specific notes:

• Gauthier tied the Ducks record for hat tricks in a season, matching the three total by Teemu Selanne in 1997-98, Corey Perry twice in 2010-11 and 2014-15 and last by Frank Vatrano in 2023-24.

• Gauthier (17 games) is the fastest player in team history to register five multi-goal games in a season, beating Selanne’s 20 games again from the 1997-98 season. The Hall of Famer scored an Anaheim record 52 goals that season, and Gauthier is currently on a 73-goal pace.

• Gauthier is the first Ducks player to score hat tricks in consecutive home games and joined 1999-00 Paul Kariya as the only other Duck with multiple goals in three straight home games.

• Gauthier’s six-game goal streak matched Paul Kariya (1999-00) and Rickard Rakell (2017-18) for fourth-longest in team history. Selanne owns the record with an 11-game streak in 1997-98 and sits second with an eight-game streak in 1998-99. Perry had a seven-gamer in 2013-14.

Onto the league marks:

• Gauthier is the seventh player since 1943 and the first since 1993 to net three hat tricks in five games.

• Gauthier is the eighth American player to score a hat trick in back-to-back home games and the first since Auston Matthews in 2023-24.

• He is the fourth player in the last 100 years to score three hat tricks in his first 17 games matching Auston Matthews in 2023-24, Bernie Nichols in 1981-82 and Mike Bossy, who did it three times.

• Gauthier is the fifth player since 1986 to score 13 goals in six games and the first since Patrik Laine in 2018-19 and only the second since Mario Lemieux and Alexander Mogilny in 1992-93.

Laurent Brossoit Stands Tall

Sunday was easily the best of Brossoit’s four games in net for the Ducks since his surprise call-up from AHL San Diego a week ago. It was also his toughest game from an analytical standpoint.

Based on four separate analytic site models–MoneyPuck, Hockey Stats, Natural Stat Trick and Post Hockey–Brossoit faced his highest expected goals in four games by a good margin and, per Post Hockey, his largest number of tipped shots

In response, the 33-year-old posted his best goals saved above expected numbers and, again per Post Hockey, lowered his rebound numbers significantly.

The eye test backs up those numbers as well. Brossoit looked smooth tracking the puck, confident on all types of shots and his pads looked particularly sticky in the second period limiting rebounds as the Penguins made their push.

Neither of Pittsburgh’s goals came at even strength with both coming with the goalie pulled in the second half of the third period and one on the power play.

What that means for the should-be starter Lukas Dostal and regular back-up Ville Husso remains to be seen, but Joel Quenneville is taking a game-by-game approach with his goal crease.

Quenneville will continue to ride the hot hand, and with four wins in four starts and his best game as his last one, Brossoit has the crease.

Burkie to the Hall

The Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2026 was inducted in Toronto on Monday night, and entering as a builder was the architect of the Ducks 2007 Stanley Cup championship: former general manager Brian Burke.

In typical Burke fashion, his induction speech was full of dry sarcasm and gruff, as he offered his own self depreciation mixed in with thanking all the people along his varied and extensive hockey journey.

“When I first got the call from the selection committee, I paused,” Burke said in his opening lines. “Nobody starts playing hockey at 13 years old in Minnesota and says someday I’m going to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Unless you’re an idiot.”

Burke then detailed his fair but not exhaustive playing career, from his Minnesota high school days to Providence College to a handful of years in the American Hockey League. Despite being a Calder Cup champion in the AHL, Burke never ascended to the NHL and eventually left for law school.

“Then you retire having never played even one NHL game. You say to yourself your hockey career is over,” Burke said. “The Hockey Hall of Fame? Not a goddamn chance you think about it, but life is funny.”

Burke worked his way up from player agent to Vancouver Canucks hockey ops to general manager of the Hartford Whalers, where he drafted eventual Ducks championship blue liner Chris Pronger. The Rhode Island native then worked for the NHL before going back into the GM chair in Vancouver, where he put together a core that included Daniel and Henrik Sedin and Ryan Kesler.

Then his big move, or at least the one most relevant to this audience, he became GM in Anaheim following the 2004-05 lockout season, and just one season later, Burke pulled the right levels to engineer a Stanley Cup championship in 2006-07.

“To the Samueli Family, thank you for giving me the keys to the car,” Burke said. “Winning the Stanley Cup in 2007 with the Ducks was what happens when a group of players refuses to be outworked. Team toughness and a legendary D corps helped.”

Burke would eventually hit plenty more stops in Toronto, Calgary and Pittsburgh, to which he quipped, “A lot of thanks for people who fired me. Don’t know why I’m doing it.”

Beyond all of his work as an executive in the NHL and USA Hockey, Burke was also a spearhead of LGBTQ inclusion in hockey to honor his late son Brendan, who was gay. The You Can Play program was started to address homophobia in sports.

While he wouldn’t come close as a player, Burke’s work to build the game from the inside and out earned him a spot among the legends of the Hockey Hall of Fame.