A Breakout Season For Noah Cates

Fate works in funny ways. For Noah Cates, it's possible that his timing could not have been better - especially if his NHL career takes off from here. Regardless, he is the very epitome of a silver lining to the Flyers' 2022-23 season.

Consider Cates's recent past. Well, maybe consider beyond that, because his draft year is barely still in the recent past. The Flyers selected Cates with a fifth-round pick in 2017, essentially taking him straight out of high school in Stillwater, MN.

After six years in the amateur ranks - two in the USHL and four at Minnesota-Duluth, including a national championship and two seasons as team captain, Cates finally embarked on his pro career with the Flyers at the end of the 2021-22 season.

As the 2022-23 season approached, Cates typically would have been headed for the conventional route of a split-season between the AHL and NHL. But over the summer, Sean Couturier needed a second back surgery, and then Cam Atkinson didn't make it out of training camp.

If Cates comes out of college a year or two early, he arrives at a Flyers team in a completely different situation, and who knows how his rookie year would have gone. But in this case, Cates was thrust to the front of the line, and he stayed there - partially because of John Tortorella's dedication to playing young players, but mostly because he earned it.

As a result, Cates became one of just four rookie forwards in the entire league to play in all 82 games in the 2022-23 season. He averaged 17:46 of ice time per game, which led all NHL rookie forwards who appeared in at least 10 games. And he finished the season at a plus-3, which doesn't sound like much but actually was the best plus-minus rating on the team for the Flyers this year, matching that of both Brendan Lemieux and Lukas Sedlak, who didn't play full seasons.

"Building confidence and getting experience this year was kind of my goal," Cates said. "To have a full opportunity in the NHL, power play, penalty kill, big minutes, playing center and what not, I think I just wanted to grow and learn from everything. [Now I have] the confidence that I can play in this league and wherever I'm slotted or play against, I'm confident and know what I can do."

He filled the role so well that Travis Konecny and some other players began to comment that Cates was reminding them a lot of Couturier.

"When that got thrown around towards the end of the year, it was super cool," Cates said. "He's won a Selke and has been a great leader in this organization for a long time. I'd love to get a game in with him here. I'm really looking forward to hopefully seeing him and Cam [Atkinson] and all those guys and seeing what we can do."

As much as the Flyers would have benefited from having a healthy Couturier last season, if they did, Cates may not have had any of that - at least not to the extent he did this season. With Couturier returning, Cates can now take all of that into a complementary role somewhere in the lineup, and be that much better for it.

"Going into this summer, it's super exciting," Cates said. "It's about taking that next step and keep moving forward, both for me and the team, and have an even better start and a better season."

Perhaps the even more remarkable thing about the season Cates just had was that he wasn't even a center when he got to Philadelphia. He'd played the vast majority of his college years at wing. The responsibilities of a center, especially on the defensive side, are much different than that of a winger. To make that switch at any pro level is difficult; to get tossed into it in the NHL just makes it that much more impressive how Cates was able to handle it.

He certainly had some help in the process, as Cates became one of the earliest beneficiaries of the Flyers' new leadership group. With players like Wayne Simmonds, Jake Voracek, and finally Claude Giroux departing over the past four years, and Couturier not around full-time, this was a year where Konecny, Scott Laughton, Travis Sanheim, and others who had been young players seemingly yesterday were suddenly the veteran leaders of the team. And it wasn't necessarily about doing things for Cates, but rather encouraging him to not be afraid to fail.

"Early on when I was maybe in a little over my head with things, [Laughton] would help calm me down, or if he was my winger he would give me confidence, he could take a faceoff or he could be low for a little bit, whatever it was," Cates said. "Definitely owe him and [Konecny] and some of these other guys for maybe helping me, but more for instilling confidence in me."

That notion also extended to Tortorella and his staff. One of the constants of the season was as long as a young player was working hard and taking the right approach, mistakes made out of aggressiveness or trying to make something happen were not going to be treated harshly.

"I think that's how a lot of those good coaches are, and as long as you show up and are putting in the work they'll respect that, and give you some time and some rope to learn from mistakes," Cates said. "As my role developed a little bit [Tortorella would] talk to me a little more about playing center, playing against top lines, different things like that. All the coaches were great about helping me learn and giving me great opportunities."

Towards the end of the year, Couturier got back on the ice with the team at practices, although he didn't appear in any games. For Cates, it became a master class in what he'd spent the year working on - especially faceoffs, which were understandably one of the more difficult things for Cates to pick up on by doing so for essentially the first time at the NHL level.

"Working on faceoffs with him or just being on the ice in general was good to see," Cates said. "I definitely tried to learn. He was always saying to get lower, own the dot, those kind of things. You can hear about it, but when you're going against him, you can see it and feel it."

Where Cates plays next year will probably be largely determined by what moves the Flyers make over the course of this summer. But whether it's on center or wing, he's ready to give it his all.

"I feel very comfortable [at center]," Cates said. "I've been good on the wing, but it feels like forever since I've been there. I don't really want to bounce around… I'd kind of like to stay in one place for a bit. But I'll do anything to be in this lineup and help this team. It's definitely good to know both and have that experience at both."