When an NHL team signs a player, it’s based a lot on how he’s played in the past and how that projects to his future. For the average onlooker, that is judged mostly by goals and assists. But for the new contract that Noah Cates just signed, things go far beyond that.
The Flyers didn’t sign Cates to become a 30-goal scorer. If he does, sure, that would be a bonus. What they signed him for is everything else he does. He’ll make the play that leads to the rush that ends up as a goal. He’ll be the one sent out to buckle down the last 45 seconds of a one-goal win. And he’ll be counted on as a leader in the locker room to help bring along everyone else who is coming next.
Cates has done all of these things before. The Flyers plucked him in the fifth round of the 2017 draft, but did not see him until late in the 2022 season. That’s because he played all four years of his college eligibility at Minnesota-Duluth. He walked into a program that had just won a national championship in 2018 and found his place on the roster to help the team repeat in 2019. The stars of those teams moved on, and Cates immediately was ready to handle a bigger role, as he became the first junior in five years to be named team captain at the start of the 2019-20 season.
A similar trajectory has taken place in Philadelphia, as Cates arrived on the scene two weeks after the Flyers traded Claude Giroux. With several longstanding veterans still on the roster, Cates watched and learned. Then over time, those players moved on – and Cates moved up in the leadership group.
In a year-end interview with Jason Myrtetus on the Flyers Daily podcast, Cates talked of learning how to listen to his body to navigate an 82-game NHL season and things he learned how to do to deal with the travel, the back-to-backs, and other parts of the grind that aren’t in the college game. Now it will be an opportunity for him to pass those tips along to players like Jett Luchanko, Denver Barkey, and anyone else who may come into the pipeline here over the next few months.
On the ice, Cates has certainly shown an ability to bring out the best in the guys on the ice with him, as evidenced by the success of his line with Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink over the past season. Whether that line stays together or not remains to be seen, but if it doesn’t, he will already have been a big part of bringing along the confidence of Foerster and Brink over the past season – and it’ll possibly be time for him to do the same for another couple of young forwards.
In the end, Noah Cates is one of the role players that every successful team needs, but it isn’t always easy to pinpoint who they are because of all the intangibles. The Flyers know he has them though, and that’s why he’ll be a critical part of the group moving forward – and likely a bargain, at that.
