Noah Cates

Last Season

Eighteen goals and 29 assists in all 82 games — 47 points, plus-26, the best figure on the club, at 16:15 a night with 44 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is excellent. Fifty-eight per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 15, and eighteen goals came out of 180 tries.

That is a checking-line centre doing all of his scoring in the paint, which is why a career-best season arrived at 27. Twenty-nine assists is a genuinely good supporting number.

A hundred and forty-nine points in 317 career games.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 194, and he plays a hard two-way game — forty-four penalty minutes, a willing forechecker, and he takes the defensive-zone draws that let the scorers start in the offensive end.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one point two per cent of the expected goals, 65th percentile, against only 47.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 30th — the club’s structure again.

The goals went 50-48 in his favour with the chances at 37.0 and 35.2, so the plus-26 is coming from somewhere other than five-on-five: he plays on the sixth-ranked penalty kill and takes almost no offensive-zone starts.

Seven points in his last ten. He is 27, a hundred and thirty-seventh overall pick, and the most underrated player on this roster.