Nathan Gaucher

A centre who has outstanding size and dominant offensive skills and his foot feet. His hands, skating, shot are all really good, and he is strong on his stick in the scoring areas, bringing pucks to the net, and not being deterred. Will bull his way through the double coverage, make stop/starts along the wall, lose his coverage and skate pucks to the middle. Can really airmail his heavy shot from long distances. For a larger forward, he pivots to face the puck on set plays and shows a flow to his movement. Unafraid to skate backwards  through a seam. He drives from one edge to the next even on complex routes. He has a lots of finesse with the puck and moves it freely on the attack. He is a late birthday in his third season in the Q, but still hasn’t gotten to a point per game pace (as he was in the shortened 2021 season where he had 31 points in 30 games). Has much success in the front of the net where he aggressively uses his size. He may need to curb his edge to cut down on the penalties.The reason seems to be that he doesn’t use his wings well, and he hasn’t really been the type of puck distributer that has made his wings better. I go as far to say he lacks imagination of a top centre sticking to the routines that he is comfortable in, and he has to improve on his stickhandling that seems stiff. He is constantly match against the opposition's best line. I see him as am off-handed left winger in the future. Either that or the team that selects him will eventually have two quality wingers to play on his flanks that are complimentary to his strengths.

--Bill Płaczek--