Noah Cates is the quintessential player that the grown hockey men are talking about when it comes to “putting on your hard hat and getting to work”. The Philadelphia Flyers centerman is rarely even spoken about on the national stage but every single night, every single shift, he does what is necessary to have his team have the advantage and win more hockey games.
The 26-year-old forward has been under the radar when it comes to people who either aren’t Flyers fans or are complete sickos and look at who has had the best defensive impact in the NHL for the last few seasons, but it’s time that he deserves to get his spotlight. Especially considering the work he’s been put through to start this season.
Cates and his linemates of Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink have been the engine of the Flyers for the last calendar year. Ever since that trio has been put together by John Tortorella, they have been running over opposing teams and been the sole provider of sustained offense for Philadelphia. And now under head coach Rick Tocchet, it’s been the exact same and possibly even to a higher degree.
As often as possible, Tocchet has Noah Cates and his line against the top players on the other team. Whether it’s Sidney Crosby on Tuesday, Kirill Kaprizov last Saturday, or Mark Scheifele before that — it is always Cates and his wingers being the line to try and suffocate and prevent their scoring chances.
Cates honored to face top competition every single night
Cates finds it incredibly rewarding and satisfying to be depended on to do that, and really, that’s what he has just always done ever since he left college hockey to play for the Flyers.
“It’s a huge honor. You just have to be ready, you got to be focused every night, every shift. So, you know, I’ve just came into the league and done it. So, it’s kind of all I know,” Cates told the media after Tuesday’s win. “But it’s an honor and a privliege and just got to work with my linemates and focus every shift. These guys are so good, so dangerous — you can’t take a shift off. You always have to be working out there and doing the little things.”
The work Cates is putting in is paying off. When he has been on the ice at 5-on-5 this season, the Flyers have 61.45 percent of the shots on goal and 64.14 percent of the expected goals, according to Evolving-Hockey — that is good for 22nd and 12th overall respectively among the 387 NHL forwards that have played at least 50 minutes.
That is just domination and he’s doing all of that against the best forwards in the world.
Tocchet believes in Cates and that belief was only accented when he hard-matched that trio against Crosby when the Penguins came to Philadelphia on Tuesday. The Flyers head coach glowingly discussed just how much trust he has in Cates and that line to play the opposing talent hard but also get their own scoring too.
“He’s the one guy, from Day 1, that has been, you know, he just keeps on chugging along. I’m giving him heavy minutes against the top,” Tocchet said. “You’re talking top players like Scheifele, Crosby, and all these guys are are the top and he’s holding his own — and then he’s there scoring too. That’s a big thing. Yeah, he’s doing a really good job.”
How Cates has dominated against the NHL’s best this season
To prevent teams from scoring is one thing. You can just park the bus, be difficult around the blue line and do everything you can with a one-way mentality to prevent instead of create. But when it comes to, honestly, the Flyers best forward line we’ve seen in years, they have been able to turn defense into offense quite easily.
Through this season, during the 94 or so minutes that the combination of Cates, Foerster, and Brink have been on the ice together, they have outscored the opponent 3-1. It’s not the most impressive totals that some other lines are scoring during their own opportunities, but to allow just one single goal in that timeframe and to have such control over the game, is insanely impressive.
Sometimes, the line-matching narrative can be overblown and not proven in a larger sample size than a game here or there. But looking at the true data, when Cates is on the ice, it’s typically against the very best players on the opposing team.
Thanks to friend of the blog Micah Blake McCurdy and his wonderful website, we can see that so far this season, the competition that Cates faces is typically the top line of the opposing team and even the No. 1 defenseman on the other side. Both sets of competition that he faces is well above the league average — so it really just proves the point that this dominant start to his season is even more impressive when the context of who is on the ice with him, comes into play.
Will the ice be tilted in the Flyers’ favor to this degree for the entire season? Most likely not, but Cates and his line has shown that they are more than capable of being one of the best possession-focused teams in the entire league and soon enough, we’ll hear about how annoying they are to play against from the lips of the best hockey players on the planet.