The Philadelphia Flyers’ penalty kill and two-way forward depth, already under pressure against a Carolina Hurricanes team that finished the regular season with the league’s fourth-best power play, now faces a significant personnel disruption. Center Noah Cates is out for the remainder of the Eastern Conference semifinals with a lower-body injury, the team confirmed. Cates had averaged more than 16 minutes of ice time per game this postseason and was used extensively on the penalty kill, where the Flyers had limited Carolina to one power-play goal through the first two games of the series. His loss forces Philadelphia to rely on depth forwards who have logged fewer shorthanded minutes this spring. The Flyers’ margin for error against a deeper, quicker Hurricanes forward group narrows accordingly. Whether the coaching staff can rebalance deployment to preserve the penalty kill’s effectiveness—or whether the Hurricanes will exploit that vulnerability—remains an unresolved tension.