We may never learn why Cutter Gauthier spurned Flyers, but we know this: new-look organization can handle a crisis

There’s an alternate universe somewhere out there where the Philadelphia Flyers come out of the Cutter Gauthier saga looking like incompetent fools.

And it’s not exactly a difficult one to envision.

After all, at its core, Monday’s trade came about due to one key fact: one of the Flyers’ top prospects, a blue-chipper drafted fifth overall just two years ago, decided he had no interest in playing for the club. Gauthier notably didn’t give a specific reason. But either he looked at the Flyers as they stand and saw a less-than-desirable destination, or a person (or multiple people) within the organization acted in a way to him that totally turned him off from the idea of ever donning the Orange & Black sweater.

Even just a year ago, the takeaway from an embittered fanbase would have been simple and straightforward: The Flyers obviously messed this up. And most importantly, Gauthier’s spurning of the organization was yet more proof that it was a poorly-run disaster, destined to be a laughing stock for years to come.

But that’s not how it played in Philadelphia at all. And it’s worth evaluating and understanding why.

Since Monday, a firestorm of speculation and rumors and theories have abounded as to why Gauthier chose to blow off the Flyers and request a trade. On Wednesday, Gauthier finally spoke, and aside from contending that neither the influence of fellow Boston College-r Kevin Hayes nor a lack of desire to play for a team coached by John Tortorella played a role in his thinking, stuck to his long-held stance that he would not be revealing the specifics behind his decision.

All he would say was that a number of factors — not just one — drove his choice.

“It wasn’t one specific reason why I asked for a trade,” Gauthier said, per Derek Lee of the Sporting Tribune. “It was multiple, re-occurring issues that I’d seen over the past year and a half, two years of being under the Flyers organization. It kind of hit me all at once, thinking ‘I can’t move forward with this’ and ‘I really need to step up for myself and see what’s best for my future’ and that’s what I did.”

So what do we know about the timeline here? We know that when the Flyers selected Gauthier back in July of 2022, he was excited about joining the organization, telling the front office at the time that he was “built to be a Flyer.” We know that according to current Flyers GM Daniel Briere, who spoke to the media on Monday night shortly after executing the trade, Gauthier had a conversation with Briere and the new Flyers’ brass in mid-March, after his Boston College season came to an end. And we know that when Gauthier returned from the World Championships at the end of May, he and his camp requested a followup call with Briere and the Flyers, during which he and agent Kurt Overhardt communicated that Gauthier no longer wanted to play for the team and was formally requesting a trade.

A prevailing theory in league circles — even before the trade went down — was that something had to have happened on that initial call between Briere and Gauthier, that something specifically was said by Briere that turned off Gauthier.

On Tuesday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that one possible explanation for Gauthier’s turn was that the Flyers would not sign him to a contract that kicked in at the end of the 2022-23 season, which would have allowed him to play for the team over the final five weeks of the year. Friedman reported that the Flyers’ unwillingness was due to the fact that signing Gauthier then could lead to increased bonus overages on their salary cap books for the 2023-24 season (they ultimately were hit with about $1.88 million worth of overages). Gauthier, the theory went, took their hesitance to mean that the organization did not think highly of him.

Per a team source, however, none of this was the case – at least from their perspective. They left the meeting believing it had went perfectly fine.

The conversation, as least as interpreted by the Flyers, was more focused on Gauthier’s conundrum of whether he would turn pro or return to college for his sophomore season — not when his pro contract would begin if he decided he wanted to go pro. The Flyers got the sense that Gauthier was legitimately on the fence about going pro in mid-March; after all, his BC head coach Greg Brown had advised Gauthier to go back to school, making the case that he believed the player needed one more year of college hockey experience before being truly ready to make the NHL jump. Bonuses and the specific time a contract would begin, per said source, were not even discussed in mid-March, and wouldn’t be — at least until Gauthier made it clear he wanted to leave school.

And apparently, he didn’t. Shortly after the call, the Gauthier camp communicated to the Flyers that Gauthier had decided to stay at BC for his sophomore season. Notably, they were not told at this time that Gauthier didn’t want to be a Flyer — just that he wanted to return to school.

So what happened? A league source theorized that it appeared to be a case of “telephone,” where one side believed they were saying one thing and the other took it in an entirely different way.

It’s worth remembering that this call occurred right after Chuck Fletcher — who drafted Gauthier in the first place — was removed as GM of the Flyers on March 10, 2023. Gauthier’s college season came to its official end on March 11, after BC lost to Merrimack in the Hockey East conference tournament, and the call happened soon after. Briere had just taken over the (then interim) GM role; he was learning on the fly and his head was surely spinning. It’s certainly possible that Briere said something seemingly innocuous on the call that was taken poorly by Gauthier, or perhaps didn’t line up with an offhand promise or assurance made by Fletcher or another staff member that Briere could not have possibly known.

And also recall that at that moment, the Philadelphia organization to all outsiders appeared to be in a uniquely miserable state.

They had just fired their general manager after a severely disappointing trade deadline and a town hall meeting that saw Fletcher be vociferously booed by local fans. The ownership group was in the midst of major changes, with Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Dave Scott retiring and being replaced by Dan Hilferty. New York fans had just invaded the Wells Fargo Center and turned it into into a de facto Rangers home game. The Ivan Provorov Pride Night fiasco showcased to the hockey world that one side of the organization had no idea what the other was doing. Questions regarding the medical staff’s competence lingered, after Sean Couturier required a second back surgery and Cam Atkinson missed the entirety of 2022-23 as well, even returning to Columbus to have more familiar doctors examine him instead of those affiliated with the team. The player that the organization used as their ambassador to Gauthier after the 2022 draft — Hayes — was in the process of being ushered off the roster. Oh, and the team was on track for its second consecutive season ending with a top-10 draft pick and had just announced a rebuild.

It wouldn’t exactly be shocking if Gauthier entered that call with serious, preexisting skepticism regarding his potential future organization, and was on the lookout for concerning signs — ultimately jumping on one and letting it fester for two months before making the final call in May that the Flyers just weren’t the right team for him.

Which is why it’s a bit surprising that more fans haven’t turned their fury on the organization in the wake of the Gauthier trade.

After all, those same fans were screaming from rafters (both literally and figuratively) about how dysfunctional and embarrassing the organization had become, right around the time that Gauthier was souring on the Flyers. The prime takeaway by the fanbase could have easily been that Gauthier’s rejection of the team was deserved, and a logical response to how far the Flyers had fallen.

So why didn’t that happen?

The Flyers did benefit from three points in their favor — two within their control, and one not. First, the team is playing well at the moment, dramatically exceeding preseason expectations, so fans are currently more willing to give the organization the benefit of the doubt. Second, the trade wasn’t for peanuts; the Flyers got back Jamie Drysdale, a potential future core piece on defense and the 2020 sixth overall pick, as the centerpiece of the deal. And finally, Gauthier’s choice to not provide a clear-cut reason for his snubbing of the Flyers left the door wide open for the Flyers to frame the narrative in their preferred way, without a competing story to challenge theirs.

But they still had to frame that narrative effectively, in a way that would play well to Flyers fans specifically and Philadelphia fans generally.

And boy, did they ever.

In the immediate aftermath of the trade — starting that very night — the Flyers hit on a simple but extraordinarily public message to Gauthier and by extension, the hockey world:

If you don’t want to be a Flyer, we don’t want you either.

The CEO of Comcast Spectacor said it on the Snow the Goalie podcast during the first intermission of Monday’s game.

“If you (don’t) want to be in Philadelphia, so be it. Go somewhere else,” Hilferty thundered. “We want somebody that wants to be in this city, wants to be part of the fabric of this city, wants to be just excited to put that uniform on every single day.”

The president of hockey operations reiterated it on the local NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcast of the game during the second intermission.

“He didn’t want to be a Flyer,” Keith Jones noted.

The head coach hammered it home at the game’s conclusion, when asked for his reaction to Gauthier not wanting to play for the Flyers.

“Then we don’t want you,” Tortorella bluntly responded.

Even the players themselves got in on the action.

“If he doesn’t want to be here, we’re happy to move on,” Travis Sanheim said in the locker room after their 4-1 loss to Pittsburgh.

Yes, Philadelphia fans love the chant that began at Union soccer matches and was made legendary by Jason Kelce at the 2018 Super Bowl parade: “No one likes us, we don’t care.” Go out on a Saturday afternoon or evening in Center City, and you’re likely to at least see one person wearing a shirt with a variation of the chant emblazoned on it. But the not-so-secret secret is this: Philly fans may say that they don’t care when other people dislike them, but they actually care very, very much.

And the Flyers’ response to the Gauthier trade very much played into that desire on the part of Philadelphians to be respected, to be wanted.

Gauthier’s decision suddenly wasn’t a rational choice driven by watching a once-proud organization run itself into the ground. It was a personal rejection of the city itself. And in their framing, the Flyers took care to make sure it came off as very personal.

There was the urbane, soft-spoken Briere making sure he referred to Gauthier as a “left winger” rather than a center, despite the fact that Gauthier has spent the last year and a half playing in the middle and trying to convince the hockey world at large that he can stick there at the NHL level. There was team leader Scott Laughton, noting two days later that the players on the team wouldn’t soon forget Gauthier’s snub.

“That’s his decision. Hopefully, we can see him next year,” Laughton said.

Even the CEO of the team’s ownership group essentially gave fans permission to rip Gauthier when he eventually plays his first game for the Ducks in the City of Brotherly Love.

“I feel bad for Cutter when he comes to… well, I don’t really feel bad for Cutter when he comes to Philadelphia,” Hilferty said. “It’s gonna be a rough ride here, and he earned it. Because you know what? We’re Philadelphians. And we want people who want to be here with us.”

The Flyers’ chosen public messaging didn’t necessarily play well in all corners nationally. Gauthier’s Wednesday revelation that he received scattered death threats from Flyers fans led to the usual round of public shaming of Philadelphia. The Hockey News published a story contending that no one — not fans, and certainly not the Flyers organization — should be angry with Gauthier for making a personal decision about where he wanted to work. And most notably, Scott Wheeler and Eric Stephens of The Athletic released an article on Saturday including voices who specifically criticized the Flyers’ organization for their chosen response strategy, with Gauthier’s former BC teammate Nikita Nesterenko contending that the Flyers “trash(ed) the kid and (said) he’s entitled and doesn’t want to be there,” and TSN analyst Craig Button referring to the Flyers’ public statements as a “smear campaign.”

But the Flyers weren’t concerned with how their public reaction to the Gauthier situation would play in Toronto, or Anaheim, or even Topeka. They cared about how it would play in Philadelphia.

And by all accounts, it played beautifully.

Jamie Drysdale was cheered on basically every one of his Wednesday shifts as he made his Flyers’ debut. Fans didn’t show up to that game with bags on their heads like they did a few years ago; they packed the Wells Fargo Center and even let loose with a few “F— you Cutter!” chants. A bunch even went up to Massachusetts on Friday to boo Gauthier in person.

Boston College security temporarily prevented these paying fans from entering the game tonight because they were wearing #Flyers gear.

They were eventually let in. Boston College is playing Providence right now at the Conte Forum in Chesnut Hill, MA.

Was sent this info from a… pic.twitter.com/1fv1cNGtyw

— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) January 13, 2024

Now, one can reasonably debate whether fan actions like profane chants and heading to a college arena to boo a teenager are fair responses or cross the line into cruelty. But you know who those fans weren’t yelling at? The Flyers.

Which presumably, was the point of the team’s PR blitz.

It also helped that the Flyers had a stone-cold piece of evidence that allowed them to look like the wronged party not just to biased fans, but unbiased observers as well: Gauthier’s ghosting of the organization after the post-World Championships call. On Thursday’s edition of the Jeff Marek Show, Marek presented his guest Briere with the argument that perhaps organizational chaos in March played a role in turning Gauthier off from the organization, and Briere acknowledged as much, before hitting back with his trump card counterargument — that Gauthier and his family refused to hear out the Flyers both during the 2023-24 BC season and in Sweden at the World Junior Championships.

“It’s very possible,” Briere admitted. “We don’t know. We have no idea. It’s very possible, and to be honest, I can understand that to a certain degree. The part that we could not understand was why we could not get a chance to present our vision to him and to his family.”

For most, that shut down the “blame the Flyers” argument — especially for fans of the team. Yes, the team was a mess back then. But look at them now, the fans’ thinking goes. They’re second in the Metropolitan Division. Matvei Michkov looms as a potential future superstar. The first-year GM had shown he can make shrewd trades, like the Ivan Provorov deal and now with Gauthier himself.

Maybe Gauthier was justified in getting disgusted with the Flyers in the first half of 2023; heck, the fans were disgusted too. But to blow off people like Briere, Jones and John LeClair — respected throughout hockey and beloved in Philly — and not even allow them the chance to make their case to Gauthier that things truly are getting better? That didn’t seem fair to them at all.

To their credit, the Flyers’ braintrust pushed that narrative relentlessly in the wake of the trade. They knew it was a winner, and took full advantage.

And after a week to digest the Gauthier saga, that feels like the primary takeaway.

No one knows at this point if Cutter Gauthier will prove to be a superstar in Anaheim, if Tortorella and Brad Shaw can unlock the potential No. 1 defenseman in Jamie Drysdale. But we do know that the new Flyers’ braintrust was faced with an unenviable and potentially embarrassing situation — and they turned it into a unifying event for the fanbase as a whole.

By getting Drysdale back in the deal despite the lack of leverage that comes with other teams knowing that the player being traded is essentially holding out, the Flyers increased fans’ confidence in the competence of the front office. By making the case that the bigger issue wasn’t Gauthier’s decision but the fact that the front office wasn’t given a chance to make the case of how much better things have gotten for the Flyers over the past seven months, they reminded fans of that very truth. And by playing to the “we’re special and if you don’t get that, screw you” mentality prevalent in Philadelphia rather than responding with inoffensive corporate speak, they proved that they get the unbridled id of their market.

Which is how an incident that easily could have served as a reminder of how far the Flyers have fallen, instead stands as a sign that the Flyers just might truly be coming back.