Cutter Gauthier scored in his seventh straight game on Wednesday night in Anaheim, and the goal tied a 105-year-old NHL record. FINAL: Nashville Predators 4, Anaheim Ducks 2. The full story of the record goal, the three November hat tricks behind it and the loss that ended Anaheim’s five-game win streak is in our original breaking report.
A day later, the league itself put a frame around what Gauthier is doing. NHL EDGE, the NHL’s puck and player tracking system, published its breakdown of the streak on Thursday, and it moves Gauthier out of a hot week and into the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy race, with a comparison that reaches back to Wayne Gretzky at the same age.
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Cutter Gauthier Ranks Third In The Rocket Richard Race
The NHL EDGE breakdown, published November 12 on NHL.com, records Gauthier third in the NHL in goals this season with 16, behind only Leon Draisaitl of Edmonton, with 18 in 20 games, and Kirill Kaprizov of Minnesota, with 17 in 20 games. Gauthier has played 18 games. His 0.89 goals per game sits second in the league, just behind Draisaitl’s 0.90.
The age line is the one that settled overnight. At 22, Gauthier is the second player in NHL history to score as many as 14 goals in any 14-day span before turning 23, joining Gretzky, who scored 16 from December 17 to 30, 1981. The same breakdown adds the longer view: since February 1, across the end of last season and the start of this one, Gauthier leads the entire league with 34 goals in his past 41 games. The Ducks made the seven-game mark official themselves on Wednesday night:
“With a goal tonight, Cutter Gauthier is the first NHL player since 1992-93 (Mario Lemieux, Pittsburgh and Alexander Mogilny, Buffalo) to score 14 goals in a seven game span, and just the sixth to do so since 1944-45.” – Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) on X, November 12, 2026
The hat tricks that built the run are in the league’s own highlights from Sunday, when Gauthier’s third hat trick in five games carried Anaheim past Pittsburgh:
The Shot Behind Gauthier’s November Run
NHL EDGE also explains how the goals are going in, and the numbers are specific to this streak. Gauthier leads the entire NHL in mid-range goals this season with eight, and he has scored four goals on shots of at least 85 mph during the streak, double any other player in the league. His hardest shot this season is 94.98 mph, in the 98th percentile among forwards, and his average shot speed of 64.65 mph sits in the 96th percentile.
The mix matters as much as the speed. Gauthier has seven snap shot goals, four slap shot goals and five wrist shot goals this season, and NHL EDGE notes he is the only player in the league with at least three goals on each of those shot types. On the power play, his 10 goals lead the NHL, with eight of them coming in the past seven games, for a Ducks power play that leads the league at 36.8 percent. Since the streak began on October 29, he leads the NHL in goals, hat tricks, multigoal games, power-play goals, game-winning goals and scoring chances. The official highlights from Wednesday night show the record goal itself, at 8:08 of the first period against Nashville:
Terry Returns As Ducks Turn To The Islanders
Wednesday was also a roster night for Anaheim, a detail that only landed in full in the NHL’s game recap. Troy Terry played his first game of the season after surgery on June 9 to repair a chronic hip impingement and a labral tear, logging 11:41 with no shots. “We had some chances that you dream about,” Terry said. “It was a lot of feeling out for me, whether it was in my game or my body, so I felt a lot better as it got on.” Captain Mikael Granlund, whose point streak reached seven games, set the task for the next one: “Tonight, we could only score two. We’ve got to try and find a way to win these games where we’re not scoring five goals a game.”
That next game is Saturday night at Honda Center against the New York Islanders, the first half of a back-to-back before Calgary visits on Sunday. The Islanders arrive with momentum of their own: they beat Los Angeles 5-2 on Thursday night, snapping a four-game winless streak with goals from five different skaters and 26 saves from Ilya Sorokin, in their first win in Los Angeles since October 2018. For Gauthier, Saturday carries one clear line in the record book: a goal would be his eighth straight game with one, passing Corey Perry and matching Teemu Selanne’s eight-game run from 1998-99, the second-longest in Ducks history. Selanne’s 11-game streak from 1997-98 remains the franchise mark, and every game Gauthier plays right now is a game that streak is in play.
