January 14, 2025
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
Noah Cates was Monday night's hero in the Flyers' win over the Panthers at the Wells Fargo Center.
Aleksander Barkov had the puck down in the corner with the game tied on Monday night, looking for an opening.
Noah Cates wouldn't let him free.
Barkov, a Selke Trophy winner, cut back and forth trying to shake his defender, but Cates, a fierce checker himself, matched every chop of the skates and left nowhere for the puck to go, neutralizing whatever damage the Flyers could've taken from the Florida Panthers right then and there.
A couple of minutes later, the defending Stanley Cup champions came crashing back down the ice. A Gustav Forsling slapshot rocketed off the pad of Sam Ersson to the front of the crease, and Tyson Foerster chipped at it to steer the puck clear of danger.
But Cates turned into speed and began the chase after it over center ice. It was him against Barkov again, but the Florida captain was caught at a bad angle, and all the Flyers center had to do was nudge the puck a bit forward to move in toward the net and Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky all alone.
Cates made the quick shift to his backhand and roofed the shot home, as the horn blared and the Wells Fargo Center crowd roared for the Flyers taking the lead.
Then they held on, 4-3, making for a pair of major back-to-back wins combined with Saturday's 6-0 drubbing of Philadelphia's newest villain Cutter Gauthier and the Anaheim Ducks.
But this time, they beat one of the NHL's best, and Cates, who scored twice on Monday night, was the catalyst for it.
"Looked at his second goal, look what he does," head coach John Tortorella called right back to postgame. "A year ago, he's going to his backhand and he's throwing it into the pad, right? That's the level of confidence the kid's playing with."
"I was trying to get back and not let them get a chance, then [the puck] popped out," Cates recounted from the locker room. "I don't know what even happened, but I was kinda moving there, so luckily just a nice move that beat him back door. Yeah, it felt like I was going pretty fast there though."
But hey, confidence can snowball quick.
WHAT A PLAY BY NOAH CATES 🔥 pic.twitter.com/pCW9IludMZ
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) January 14, 2025
Cates scored his first goal of Monday night on the power play early into the third period. Linemate Bobby Brink dug the puck out the corner and then shuffled it out to Rasmus Ristolainen at the point, who then relayed it to Travis Sanheim for a blast at the top of the opposite faceoff circle.
A rebound bounced straight to Cates in the slot, and he slammed it away before Bobrovsky could recover, completing the Flyers' climb out of a 2-0 hole they fell immediately into in the opening period.
They looked flat to start, like all the energy from Saturday had faded, but "Give them credit," Tortorella said of his team. "They rebounded and found a way to get involved...
"This time of year, after a good win we had the other night, playing against one of the top teams in the league, to come back against them, it gives you a little juice as we push forward here."
And with Cates centering the Flyers' most productive line of late.
Going back through 14 games in the past month, including Monday night, Cates has seven goals and five assists for 12 points, and a plus-1 rating.
The 25-year-old was averaging 16:09 of ice time going into the Panthers game, and went on to skate 16:27 for the night, with 3:03 on the power play and 1:00 on the penalty kill.
Cates' line, with him up the middle and Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink on his wings, has been generating a 66.7 expected goals for percentage, per Money Puck, which leads the Flyers' combinations and sits at 17th in the NHL as of Tuesday morning.
Catesy on clean-up duty. #FLAvsPHI | #LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/76eqd36f7C
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) January 14, 2025
On his own, Cates is skating with a 0.95 expected goals per 60 minutes average, again per Money Puck, which is the third-best rate on the team behind Joel Farabee and leading scorer Travis Konecny – and with the Flyers very notably thin at center, he has been increasingly earning Tortorella's trust to take on more the longer this solid stretch for him goes.
"Every player wants responsibility, and we're certainly giving it to him," Tortorella said. "He sees the door's open as far as the minutes that he's getting. Remember, at the beginning of the year, he wasn't playing. I had him scratched, and any player that sees the door open, he wants to succeed."
So Cates is stepping up and running with it.
That doesn't mean the Flyers' center problems are all solved now. There's still a lot of work to be done up the middle, especially in the search for that truly elite playmaker at the top, but opportunity exists there because of it. The door is open, as Tortorella said, and Cates is finding his own way through the frame.
"Situational hockey and situational awareness is something I've done my whole career," Cates said. "It's a strength of mine, with my brain and maybe not being the best skater, I just kinda use my brain and defend hard in those situations. Those situations in the past have kinda hurt us, so just trying to do my best to do the best there."
Which is taking the other way up the ice now, too, much to the joy of his teammates.
"It's unbelievable," Garnet Hathaway said of his Cates during his postgame turn with the media. "I could stay here probably all night and talk to you guys about Noah and just what he means to this team, the organization to day in and day out, not the rink, coming here, just the way he approached it.
"He's maybe an old soul in the sense of like he knows how to do it, and I'm just really happy for him, to be able to see him, you say 'take a step' but to keep going to his potential. I don't think he's done either.
"He plays the game the right way, and I think if he keeps doing that and he knows that'll lead to offense, he'll be here for a long time doing a lot of great things."
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