Toronto Maple Leafs: Frederik Gauthier Out With Injury

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Frederik Gauthier is injured.

With the Toronto Maple Leafs already down Kasperi Kapanen (soon to be back), Travis Dermott and Jake Gardiner, and having allowed almost six goals per game recently, the news of Gauthier’s foot injury was not welcome.

According to the team, Gauthier will miss the next two games and be reevaluated.

One assumes Nic Petan will sub in, in his place.

Frederik Gauthier

Drafted in the first round, 21st overall, of the 2013 NHL Entry draft, Gauthier was long considered a bust, bust has recently earned an NHL job and played well.

The 23 year old has three goals and twelve points in 63 games, and while that doesn’t sound like much, he’s played a regular shift, been used on the penalty kill and provided useful fourth line minutes.

There are flashes where Gauthier looks like he has more to give offensively, but generally speaking, he plays a quiet game that, given his size, leaves you wanting more.  He’s huge, and occasionally he’ll have these shifts where you think he could be awesome if he could just keep it up, but overall his impact is minimal.

Gauthier has negative differential in shot-attempts, shots, and scoring chances.  He has a positive goal differential, but when he’s on the ice, the team has an 11% shooting percentage (fairly high) and a 93.42 save percentage (very high).

Over time the negative differentials (which represent much larger sample sizes) will catch up to Gauthier and his impact will be negative.

Unfortunately for Gauthier, almost every player he plays with does better without him on the ice.  His most common linemate this year, Tyler Ennis, goes from a 46% CF with Gauthier, to a 56% player without him.

That’s not good.

The Toronto Maple Leafs obviously feel Gauthier gives them an element that they otherwise lack, but it’s worth asking if employing a giant is worth the trade off in skill.

Nic Petan, the player who will most likely play 4C with Guathier out, had the opposite effect when he was on the Jets: almost everyone he played with did better with him, than without him. (stats naturalstattrick.com)

If Petan can form a line that wins out against their 4th line counterparts (i.e gets above 50% in all categories) then it doesn’t matter what size anyone is.

It is terrible that Guathier is injured, but this give the Leafs with an opportunity to give Nic Petan an extended look, and that might be the best thing for the team in the long run.