As the trade deadline nears, the Philadelphia Flyers led by Danny Briere are going to have some tough decisions to make. A name that is quickly rising on their to-do list is Noah Cates, who becomes a restricted free agent in the summer. The soon-to-be 26-year-old signed a two-way bridge deal back in July of 2023 that paid him $2.63 million a season.
Cates’ rookie season in 22-23 was phenomenal, garnering both Calder and Selke votes for his efforts. Then a sophomore slump hit him hard last year, and his 2024-25 season has been a tale of both faces of the player. His early season saw him scratched and underutilized in a fourth line role, then a breakout in mid-December has carried him for over a month. He’s posted 10 goals and 22 points in 44 games this season, which could flirt with breaking his previous career high of 13 goals and 38 points set in 2022-23.
Cates is one of four pending restricted free agents on the Flyers’ roster and given his all-over-the-place play, should the Flyers re-sign him or move on from him?
Keep
The decision to keep Cates boils down to banking on the good version of Cates sticking around more often than not. If he can be a 50-point forward while stepping up defensively, essentially taking Sean Couturier’s role as he continues to age, that could be a player worth keeping around.
More often than not, he has seemingly been a favorite of Tortorella, some brownie points when it comes to a potential extension, and as a team that lacks any kind of serious center depth, the job is certainly there for the taking for him to rise up the depth chart as well. It’s hard to say with a straight face that he’s anything more than a 3C at this point, but it’s Tortorella’s Flyers, that’s the exact player they love.
Trade
Noah Cates has played 200 NHL games, with half of them being a very good two-way player with a scoring upside, and the other half being a generic dime-a-dozen depth forward that doesn’t bring much of anything to the table. His curent cap hit of $2.6 million isn’t that big a gamble for that kind of risk, but if his uptick in play, particularly if it carries him the rest of the season, may result in some recency bias and a larger cap hit coming his way.
If his next deal settles in at closer to $4 million, or something stupid like $5 million or more, then it’s just not worth it for the Flyers to bring him back. His price tag may not be huge at the deadline, but if the good version of Cates is here to stay, a responsible two-way forward riding a scoring wave should bring them a nice little return from a playoff team. Let some other team wager with the extension, because unless Briere and the Flyers are going to undo some financial mistakes elsewhere, a Cates extension just isn’t smart business right now.
Conclusion
It’s a very Flyers thing to happen that one of their depth players goes on a heater in the second half of a contract year when there’s been minimal signs of life for most of the last year-and-a-half. The lack of roster movement the Flyers have had under Briere virtually guarantees Cates will return to the team next season, he even hinted to it during his mid-season presser.
One of the biggest issues with re-signing Cates comes down to term. Briere and the Flyers struggle to contain themselves when it comes to handing out long-term contracts. The chance they hand him a one-year, reasonably priced “prove it” contract feels like something they won’t even consider. It’ll be four, five, six years at some ungodly cap hit, that even at Cates’ best, won’t be justifiable because it’s just what they do. Even if Cates gets a respectable raise, say $3 – $3.5 million aav, and they also keep Scott Laughton, Joel Farabee, Nic Deslauriers, Garnet Hathaway and Ryan Poehling, that is entirely too much money and space committed to depth players, an even more egregious sin considering how weak their offense is overall.
Knowing when to part ways with players that aren’t considered the pillars of the team is a skill that any good GM around the league has. The reality is there just isn’t really a good reason to bring Cates back. This may end up being one of the bigger tests Briere has in all of 2025. Can he step up and make a potentially tough decision to move on from a Torts favorite? Or will Cates just be the next multi-year bottom six extension?
“Gotta know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em” as Kenny Rodgers once said, a lesson Briere needs to learn quickly, because he has a tendency to hold onto everybody.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit:
brotherlypuck.com 