The Flyers have signed forward Noah Cates to a four-year, $16MM extension, according to a team announcement. The deal is worth $4MM against the cap and runs from the 2025-26 to 2028-29 campaigns. There’s no trade protection in the deal, reports Kevin Kurz of The Athletic. His year-by-year breakdown is as follows, per PuckPedia:
2025-26: $3.75MM base salary, $1.25MM signing bonus ($5MM total)
2026-27: $3MM base salary, $1MM signing bonus ($4MM total)
2027-28: $4MM base salary
2028-29: $3MM base salary
Cates, 26, was set to be an arbitration-eligible RFA this summer with a $2.625MM qualifying offer – equal to his previous cap hit. His new deal, which takes him through his age-30 season and will cover most of his prime, comes in well north of that at a roughly 50% increase.
It’s a worthy raise for Cates, though. Coming off his third full NHL season, he did well to re-establish himself as a middle-six shutdown forward after a difficult sophomore campaign. While a natural center, faceoffs have been an issue for Cates since the beginning, and while he’s improved since his rookie year, he’s still at a 44.6% win rate for a career-high, set this past season. That’s led to increased deployment on the wing, although he did spend a good portion of 2024-25 centering a unit with Bobby Brink and Tyson Foerster.
The 2017 fifth-round pick has averaged a 14-22–36 scoring line per 82 games in parts of four NHL seasons. He slightly outpaced those totals this year, finishing fifth on the team in goals (16), seventh in assists (21), and seventh in points (37) while logging 78 games played. His four absences were healthy scratches in a five-game window to begin the season. He also ended the year with eight points in his last eight games.
Cates finished 15th in Selke Trophy voting as a rookie in 2022-23 but had a brutal follow-up campaign, posting 18 points and a minus-eight rating in 59 showings last year. This season’s offensive rebound also included resurgent defensive and two-way impacts. The Flyers controlled 58.3% of expected goals with the Foerster-Cates-Brink line on the ice at 5-on-5, according to MoneyPuck. Philly also allowed just 2.26 goals against per 60 minutes with Cates on the ice at 5-on-5, the lowest mark of any Flyers skater with at least 250 minutes of ice time, per Natural Stat Trick.
While Cates plays more of a middle-six role at even strength, he averaged nearly 16 minutes per game this season due to fringe power play and routine penalty kill deployment. He averaged 1:33 per game shorthanded, the most among any Flyers forward who ended the season with the club.
That all makes his four-by-four extension come across as a rather reasonable one for a quality third-line contributor with some upward mobility in the lineup in his prime years. After getting extensions done with Cates and Foerster in the past few days, general manager Daniel Brière has a shade under $19MM in cap space to fill just four roster spots, according to PuckPedia. The team’s lone notable pending free agents, both restricted, are Jakob Pelletier and Cameron York.
Cates is the fifth Flyer signed through the 2028-29 season, joining Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Owen Tippett. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent when his deal expires.
Image courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.