There were plenty of players whom Cutter Gauthier could have chosen to emulate while he watched the United States National Team Development Program play as a kid, but he latched on to one in particular.

“If I had to say one player it’d definitely be Clayton Keller,” Gauthier told USA Hockey’s Sidney Binger. “He’s a left winger as well as a lefty so he’s someone I tried to model my game after and watching him go through the NTDP was pretty cool.”

As Gauthier prepares for the NHL Draft and a collegiate career at Boston College (Keller played at arch-rival Boston University), it’s safe to say that Keller is no longer the point of comparison. Gauthier has filled out to nearly 6-feet-3 and 200 pounds with more room for weight on his big frame. He’s not going to be the play-making offensive force that the Coyotes forward has become.

“When he got him he was just a hungry kid who was trying to get better,” said Gauthier’s NTDP coach, Adam Nightingale, who will move behind the bench at Michigan State in the fall. “What he was trying to learn how to become was a power forward and that takes time. He’s got such an elite shot that he was able to score from the outside and he still has that ability like very few guys can, but he needed to learn how to get to the inside, he needed to learn how to play more physical and he needed to learn how to move his feet so those were really the three things we focused on for the two years I had him.”

Nightingale and the NTDP staff accomplished their goals. In his first season moving up to the U18 team last season, Gauthier finished second on the team with 34 goals (65 points) in 54 games. Much of his damage was done over the second half of the season, including six games at the U18 World Junior Championship where he had three goals and nine points to help lead the US to the gold-medal game in Germany where it lost to Sweden, 6-4, despite outshooting the Swedes 51-15.

“We played a game in Muskegon where he had 14 shots on net,” Nightingale said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. They were legit chances and that’s a really good league. I remember watching that game like, ‘Holy cow.'” 

That recent surge has helped propel Gauthier up many draft boards, including that of Wednesday’s PHNX Coyotes show guest, TSN’s Bob McKenzie, who lists Gauthier as the fifth best prospect in his final rankings. That surge also has some scouts and analysts wondering if the Coyotes might pull a surprise by selecting the Scottsdale-raised kid with the No. 3 overall pick.

---

“Cutter is one of the most interesting players in the draft,” The Athletic’s Corey Pronman said. “He has size. He has skating ability. So from a pro projection he’s already really interesting. He’s shown offensive ability. He has one of the best shots in the draft. He can play all situations for the NTDP, and what’s interesting about him is he did play center for stretches of the season. 

“With the program, he ended the season on Logan Cooley’s wing, but even when he was there, he was taking a lot of faceoffs so I think there is a debate in the industry right now whether Cutter is going to be a pro center or pro winger, and if you believe he’s a center, and with the size and the scaling of the offense, he’s a very interesting pro prospect for that reason.”

Gauthier was born in Sweden while his dad, Sean Gauthier, was completing his pro career with Skellefteå in HockeyAllsvenskan, Sweden’s second division, in 2004-05. He moved to Scottsdale when he was 2 and contemplated playing goalie before offensive success convinced him to remain at forward. He did that for the Junior Coyotes, before moving to Michigan to further develop his game with Honeybaked and Compuware.

The question for Gauthier now becomes whether he plays center or wing at the pro level. Most scouts project him as a winger and he spent a good chunk of time there with Cooley at center, but Nightingale said that Gauthier probably played “three-quarters” of his NTDP career at center and that is where BC anticipates using him next season.

“He’s big, he can skate, he can play through the middle of the rink and he’s good on draws,” Nightingale said. “He wants to play 200 feet and those are all obviously very valuable things. Every level you go up, it gets harder to do it as the pyramid starts to narrow and you’re playing against more high-end guys, but he’s a guy that values playing both sides of the puck, which is huge, and I certainly think he’s a guy that can be dominant down the middle.”

Wherever he ends up, Gauthier believes the experience gained by playing center helped.

“I was center for about a month, month and a half when (Cooley) was gone and took a pretty big step with my consistency playing in the middle in a big role,” he told The Hockey News. “As the No. 1 center, it helped me a lot and helped grow my game.”

Follow Craig Morgan on Twitter