This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Noah Cates
Philadelphia Flyers Left Wing
Fifty-one per cent of his shot attempts came from inside 20 feet — the highest share on the club — and he took 14 penalty minutes all season.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | PHI | 16 | 5 | 4 | 9 | +4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 23 | 21.7 | 13:15 |
| 2022-23 | PHI | 82 | 13 | 25 | 38 | +3 | 12 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 107 | 12.2 | 17:46 |
| 2023-24 | PHI | 59 | 6 | 12 | 18 | -8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 78 | 7.7 | 13:48 |
| 2024-25 | PHI | 78 | 16 | 21 | 37 | +3 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 110 | 14.5 | 15:53 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 235 | 40 | 62 | 102 | +2 | 30 | 5 | 1 | 9 | 318 | 12.6 | 15:50 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
16 goals and 21 assists in 78 games — 37 points at 15:53 a night, plus-3, on 14 penalty minutes, which is among the lowest totals of any forward here.
50.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 59th percentile. His ice went 37-50 against an expectation of 38.30-37.33 — thirteen goals conceded above expectation behind a defensive centre whose chance suppression was fine.
The Finesse Game
110 attempts at a median of 19 feet with 51 per cent of them from inside 20 feet, the highest share of any forward on this roster, converting at 14.6 per cent. He shoots from the paint or he does not shoot.
21 assists in 78 games. The hands are ordinary and the positioning is not; he arrives in the slot because he read the play three seconds earlier, and that is the whole of his offensive game.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 194 and functionally physical rather than heavy. He forechecks hard, he blocks shots, and he wins pucks by getting there first.
14 penalty minutes in 78 games is a defensive centre who is essentially never beaten badly enough to have to foul, and he is a first-unit penalty killer for that reason.
The Intangibles
A fifth-round pick in 2017 out of Minnesota-Duluth, 235 NHL games in, and the son and brother of professional hockey players.
He is 26 and has been a first-unit penalty killer since his rookie season. On a club that was 10th in the league at killing penalties and 30th on the power play, he is on the right side of that.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 979 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.6%
- 39th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 50 against. Expected: 38.3 and 37.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 13 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 979 minutes at five-on-five
- Bobby Brink61%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2024-25
- The club
- PHI took 52.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 979 minutes at five-on-five — 57th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyson Foerster | 52.9% | 43.3% | 48.2% |
| Bobby Brink | 55.4% | 42.9% | 46.9% |
| Travis Sanheim | 50.7% | 50.6% | 55.1% |
52.9% together, 43.3% for him apart and 48.2% for Foerster apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
160 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.