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.
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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 three were all in the 94th percentile or better in the NHL in the previous stat, while the next closest player was in the 48th percentile.
When we use relative xGF% (xGF% Rel), that helps quantity this better, as it’s a stat made for this kind of dilemma. If we look at every team’s final 29 contests, the Flyers had three of the eight best players in xGF% Rel (of 357 qualified forwards), which is a pretty unprecedented amount. We have to go all the way down to the top 39 to find the next team with three players. For the Colorado Avalanche, Nathan MacKinnon (21st), Artturi Lehkonen (33rd), and Mikko Rantanen (39th) made the cut.
The difference between the Flyers and the Avalanche in this data is not only how far down we had to go to get another team, but the players listed include two of the best in the league (MacKinnon and Rantanen) for Colorado on top of arguably their third-best forward (Lehkonen). This obviously differs from Philadelphia, as their players in this tier are essentially glorified bottom-six forwards.
All of this is to highlight the Flyers’ (very unhealthy) reliance on their shutdown line toward the end of 2023-24. That was bad news for the team as a whole last season, hence their 10-14-5 record during that span, but it’s great news that the three players were able to handle that sort of pressure. With the playoffs on the line, they were called upon in big moments and oftentimes came up clutch.
Cates, Poehling, and Hathaway were probably the biggest reasons why the Orange and Black didn’t fall off the map sooner. The only trio winning their minutes at the time, this core could be something special.
What a Shutdown Line Does for the Flyers
Cumulatively averaging 15:12 of ice time during those last 29 games, it’s safe to say that head coach John Tortorella lessens the usage burden of the Poehling line assuming he uses it at all. Speaking in a general sense, having a reliable shutdown line does wonders for a team. The top stars will always get the most love, but the low-skill line that wins shifts against high-end players deserves a fair share of that adoration.
Just off of my memory alone, the Flyers haven’t had a line that they could rely on like this. Over these last few seasons, in particular, forward depth has been a weakness—that changed in 2023-24. Now that the team actually has the resources to construct a shutdown line, it could really take them far assuming the rest of the lineup is doing their part this time.
Not only did the line dominate their minutes, but they did so against a variety of competition. Instead of being an all-situations unit like it more or less seemed to be in 2023-24, we can expect this trio to go out—most frequently in leading scenarios—and prevent high-quality scoring chances. If they can come across some goals like they did last season, what the Orange and Black have is a never-in-doubt line that they can put out there with full confidence—this is more of a luxury than it sounds.
We can expect their on-ice excellence to cool down a bit, but Cates and Hathaway specifically have been some of the best bottom-six players in the game for a couple of seasons now. Disappointing campaigns happen to anyone, but the likeliest outcome is that the top-end defense sticks and there’s not much to worry about on this front.
If there’s no significant regression, the Flyers really have something here. If the top half of the lineup does its job and Matvei Michkov starts to take the offense to that next level, this group of three defensive forwards could be a nightmare for the opposition. We can be somewhat confident they’ll be used to start the 2024-25 campaign due to how ridiculously successful they were in their previous outing, but whether separated or fully together, something is in the air.
Over the past few seasons, the Flyers have really just thrown out the bottom half of their lineup due to necessity rather than because it provided actual benefit. But that all changed especially toward the end of their 2023-24 campaign. They have a brand new X-factor that most wouldn’t recognize on the surface.
Stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick
