Having just wrapped up his fourth full season in the NHL, Flyers’ center Noah Cates brought with him through this year his central brand of defensively responsible hockey, but continued to build on the other elements of his game. Though somewhat under the radar, he reached new heights in production and worked to round out his game nicely, and proved himself as an even more critical pieces to the Flyers’ forward mix.
| Games played | Goals | Assists | Points | PIM | Shots On Goal | Shooting Percentage | Average TOI |
| 82 | 18 | 29 | 47 | 44 | 132 | 13.6 | 16:15 |
From this season, Cates comes away with the title for Most Durable Flyer, as he was the only player to dress for all 82 games throughout the regular season, and there is some immediate value that he was able to bring through that. But in that lengthy season, he was able to deliver some very solid results. Though his shooting percentage continued to come back down to earth a bit (down nearly a full percentage point from the season before), he still managed to set a career high in both goals and points scored, delivering two more goals and 10 more points than he did in the previous season.
We did see him producing at a slightly higher rate up until the month of December (with the first of the month being when they lost Tyson Foerster with injury and that very productive line with those two and Bobby Brink was broken up), with 27.66 percent of his points coming over the first 25 percent of games played on the season, but it’s a reasonable dropoff — one within the realm of expectation for losing a very talented offensive player on his wing, but not enough to suggest that it was Foerster’s impacts alone that were driving the success of that line.
| (5v5) Goals For % | Expected Goals For % | Corsi For % | High Danger Attempts For % | PDO |
| 59.09 | 50.59 | 47.87 | 52.60 | 1.027 |
The production from him was quite positive, and it was made possible by a sound process underlying it. The Flyers struggled across the board this season to generate a high volume of chances, so the share of shot attempts doesn’t grade out especially kindly for much of anyone, but Cates did favorably relative to his teammates, coming in just a bit (.11 percent) above the team average in that metric.
But everywhere else, we can see his impacts really took off. While the opponents were still getting the better of the overall share of chances when Cates was on the ice, the same can’t be said when it comes to the more dangerous scoring chances, nor the goals themselves. Here, the Flyers were able to tip the ice well in their favor in Cates’s minutes, and brought an effective approach — if you can’t suppress all offense entirely, at least make sure you’re taking care of the dangerous areas and helping out your goaltender.
| (5v5) Points Per 60 | Primary Points Per 60 | Shots On Goal Per 60 | Shot Attempts Per 60 | Expected Goals Per 60 |
| 1.8 | 1.36 | 5.7 | 10.03 | 0.76 |
Beyond that, Cates was still nicely doing his part to contribute a good bit of individual offense. He was consistent in his ability to set up chances for his teammates, but his individual impacts still graded out well — he was one of the team’s more efficient generators of dangerous chances (sixth among all skaters in individual Expected Goals per 60 among players with 20 or more games played), making for a well-balanced approach to his game. That is, the eye would tell us that he continued to put in good work to be disruptive and break up dangerous chances in his own zone, but he also did his part to create just as many chances of that same ilk at the other end.
Did Cates live up to expectations?
There’s something of a baseline level of effectiveness that we’ve come to expect from Cates, as far as his shutdown game is concerned, but the complete scope of his contributions this season pretty well exceeded any expectations that we might have brought into this season. His game isn’t always flashy, but he’s been dependable in his defensive assignments, regularly tasked with facing some of their most difficult opponents, and doing well to shut them down with ease. This has always been a notable element of his game, but it’s been a real positive to see him continuing to help suppress offense at a high level, regardless of who he’s tasked with playing with.
On the flip side, while we don’t tend to expect him to be a huge producer of individual offense — his line simply isn’t deployed for the primary purpose of doing that — it’s been nice to see him continuing to polish out that side of his game, to work on creating more space and chances for himself, and jumping on them when the moment calls for it. He’s turning nicely into a threat at both ends of the ice, and that’s been a pretty tremendous boost to the Flyers.
What can we expect from Cates next season?
Now, all of that said, we can still acknowledge that we understand that the ceiling of his offensive game is not infinite. We certainly would like to see him continue to refine that side of his game, but at already 27 years old, there’s likely not a tremendous amount of runway still before him to make big strides.
All the same, if this is the player that he is — a 45 or so point producer bringing a sound defensive game — that’s a valuable mix that the Flyers will certainly take over the long run. He’s carved out a role for himself as the anchor of an effective shutdown line in the middle of this lineup, and earned quite a bit of trust from the coaching staff along the way, and as such, we expect to see him given the same role in the next season, and continuing to deliver the same quality of work.
How do we grade Cates’s 2025-26 season?
On the whole, it was another very solid season for Cates. We can come away from it impressed by the strides he took to become an even more active offensive creator, but doing it in a way that didn’t force him to leave the core defensive stability that defines his game above all else. It made for a really effective mix, and it’s hard to ask for more from him than that.
Grade: A
