If there was a player that needed to build off of his previous season, it was Noah Cates.
After playing all 82 games through the 2022-23 season and building a very strong case to be a very good rookie, the pressure was on Cates to improve the parts of his game that he lacked during that campaign. Oddly enough, it wasn’t what most rookies are being criticized for.
Cates had a stellar defensive season and is still a stellar defensive player. He, frankly, gives a shit when it comes to the other team not scoring and that is far and beyond what most rookie forwards think when coming into the league. He got some Selke Trophy votes as a rookie who scored just 38 points during last season — like, that is just an incredible feat in a vacuum. Normally, there needs to be some level of good offensive production to get noticed for the defensive forward award (for some reason), but Cates was right there in the thick of it and finished above known two-way forces like Mark Stone and just slightly below current Selke finalist, Auston Matthews.
With that already on his resume, Cates had to keep that same level of dedication to defense for the 2023-24 season, while also potentially building upon his 38 points and being more of an offensive contributor, so that he can become something more than a bottom-six center who is excellent defensively, used for killing penalties, but doesn’t do much else.
And, well, unfortunately, partly due to an injury that reduced his season to 59 games, Cates did not do that.

Through the games he did play, the 25-year-old center managed to score just six goals and 18 points, a reduction of roughly 0.16 points per game compared to last season, which adds up. But, we can also blame it on his usage.
The return of Sean Couturier (for most of the season) really hindered the potential of Cates becoming a Couturier-esque two-way center last season. The rookie was so relied on during last season and then with the captain coming back, wasn’t really needed to be in the top-six forward group. His average time-on-ice went from 17:46 to his current 13:48 — almost four minutes per game can do a whole lot to reduce a player’s production.
But Cates did contribute in other ways.

If you really needed to see a set of five numbers to come to the conclusion that Cates was a “process not results” type of player, well here they are.
Cates was not able to outscore his opponents while on the ice for the Flyers this season, and he suffered from terrible luck after having an on-ice shooting percentage of just 6.74 (nothing was going in for the Flyers with him on the ice), but everything else was just exactly what you want.
Whenever Cates was out there, the Flyers were simply the better team when it came to everything but the puck crossing the goal line. Expected goals, shot attempts, high-danger shot attempts — Cates was a factor to make the Flyers have an advantage. Even though he didn’t individually produce points, he was an incredibly important player for the Flyers’ overall strategy this season.

And thanks to our pal Micah over at HockeyViz, we can clearly see that Cates was one of the best Flyers this season, except when it came to scoring goals. The sophomore center controlled play like some of the best two-way centers in the game, but just didn’t get to produce anything on the rare power play opportunities (no one did on the team this year) and didn’t finish on his chances. Everything else, is elite.

So obviously when it comes to individual production, yet again, Cates did not improve or get close to the top on the team.
Among all regular Flyers skaters, Cates’ 0.7 individual expected goals per hour was eighth and the typical players were above him — the Owen Tippett, Travis Konecny, Garnet Hathaway(?), Cam Atkinson, Joel Farabee, etc. — but he did manage to get more valuable chances than players who ended up scoring way more goals than him, like Morgan Frost. But still, there’s nothing really of note when it comes to Cates’s individual play.
Three Questions
Did they live up to expectations?
It really depends on what a person’s expectation of Cates was. Realistically, the spectrum of expectation for this guy was as wide as it could be. Some people were comfortable seeing him as a solid, middle-six center who did everything right but didn’t score goals, while others wanted him to take the next step to really make a mark and solidify his position as one of the better two-way centers in the NHL.
He definitely didn’t do the latter, but also the lineup was modified enough that the opportunity really just wasn’t there to produce like he did during his rookie campaign. And thankfully, there is no question now that Cates is capable of continuing to be almost-elite when it comes to defense.
What can we expect from him next season?
This might be a cop out, but it really depends on what the lineup looks like and who is on the roster. If Sean Couturier is either out for a long time (or is somehow traded away), or if there is another center added or removed, then it would greatly affect Cates’s 2024-25 season.
If Couturier (and potentially Scott Laughton) is no longer part of this team, and it’s really Morgan Frost as the top center, then Cates just has to prove that he is a better option than Ryan Poehling to be a top-six center. And then, we most likely get to see more production from him and actually finish on the chances that we know he can generate.
If nothing changes and even if they add a young center to this team, then Cates is most likely reduced to a depth role and we will most likely see the same sort of season from him.
How do we grade his 2023-24 season?
Overall, with little production but helping the team immensely in every single other way, you have to still grade Cates’s campaign as a good one. The Flyers being a very good underlying team, while just not being able to put the puck in the back of the net and save the puck from going in their own net, was the summary of their entire season. And considering Cates experienced the exact same thing, then we have to grade him right where we think the team as a whole performed — good but not really in the upper-half of finishes.