For those who weren’t paying attention toward the end of the Philadelphia Flyers ’ 2023-24 season, there’s a trio of players on the roster that is much more essential to the lineup than it might appear. The Noah Cates , Ryan Poehling , and Garnet Hathaway line was the team’s best for an extended period of time—that shutdown group will be critical in the Flyers’ playoff hopes this upcoming campaign. Flyers Were Dependent on the Cates-Poehling-Hathaway Line Not only was this line very good, but the Flyers depended on it when times got tough .
And we’re not just talking about high usage, it was flat-out the club’s only trio that was winning shifts on a consistent basis. In 163:16 of even-strength ice time over the course of the entire campaign, the trio put up some incredible numbers. They had a 58.
9 Corsi percentage (CF%), 53.3 goals percentage (GF%), and a whopping 72.4 expected goals percentage (xGF%).
This line was used heavily toward the end of the season, with 93.2 percent of its total ice time coming from Feb. 12 to April 16 (the Flyers’ last 29 contests)—let’s look more closely at that run.
If we hone in on that 29-game span, their importance to the team becomes even more evident. Among the Flyers’ 10 forwards with at least 200 minutes of ice time from Feb. 12 onward, only three of them put up a 49.
0 xGF% or better—Cates, Poehling, and Hathaway were those players, and they each had above a 60.0 xGF%. To put that into better perspective, those th.