April 22, 2026
Nick Tricome/PhillyVoice
Noah Cates looks for Kathleen Shive by the glass every Flyers home game during warmups.
Noah Cates keeps an eye out every time he takes the home ice for warmups these days.
The Flyers center has his habits and rituals for before every game, like all NHL players do, and for him, he likes to break after the first couple of drills to go jump into the glass just behind the net.
After a while, Flyers fan Kathleen Shive picked up on that.
A season ticket holder going back 13 years, Shive and her husband Randy are there at Xfinity Mobile Arena for every Flyers home game, and make the near two-hour drive down from their home in Easton early enough to make sure, every time, that they're there right behind the boards to catch warmups.
Cates is Shive's favorite player. She always shows up in her No. 27 jersey, and then, some time just after the holidays in January, the thought hit her: What if she tried jumping into the glass with him from the other side?
It's part of both their pregame rituals now, even though neither has actually met the other.
When Cates makes his turn to start skating toward the wall, Shive stands up and points to the 27 on the arm of her jersey. When he reaches the glass, they both bump into it in unison. Cates turns back to smile as he skates away, and Shive does the same from the other side, sometimes with a few more fans cheering behind her or even grabbing a picture or video of it to send her.
"I thought, 'You know what? I'm just gonna see if maybe he'll hit me, since I wear his jersey,' and he did," Shive recalled. "So I just kept doing it, and it just kind of got to be an every game kind of thing. I just thought I would give it a try and just see.
"I figured worst-case scenario, he'll ignore me, and no big deal. But I just thought that was really cool. It was a way for me to connect with the game."
And there's no mistake either. Cates does see her every time.
"She's got my jersey, and she's ready for it every time. I go right there," said Cates, who lit up with a big grin talking about the warm-up jump after practice last week in Voorhees. "It's just kind of the fans here, how great they are, how passionate they are.
"It's definitely just a cool little moment, you know, where about a month ago I saw her, she got the jersey, she knew. Since then, she's been doing it and we've had a good run. It's fun. Hopefully, she keeps doing it."
For a playoff run, and the Flyers' first home playoff game after a long eight years? "Definitely," Shive said.
She was there at her usual spot for warmups when the Flyers took the ice to a thundering roar from an amped up crowd.
Cates ran through his first couple drills, then looked up to start taking his strides toward the boards.
Shive stood up, in her orange and black Cates jersey, and pointed to the 27 on her arm.
They jumped up and crashed into the glass in sync, then both turned and smiled at one another as Cates skated away.
It's their pregame ritual, a uniquely special one at that, and a habit that ended up going alongside the Flyers' surge back into the playoffs.
"It's something super cool," Cates said. "It's special that she did that, and awesome that she's a part of it. Like I said, the fans are super awesome here, and it's just kind of a funny little routine that got started."
"[It's] awesome, and an awesome run these past couple months," Cates added. "That's kind of another fun part of it."
And a part that, as Shive said, connects her with the game and her favorite player, in a way that only hockey really can.
"I've had a number of people ask me, they're like 'Oh, you must be Mom' and everything," Shive quipped. "But, I said no. I said, 'It's just something I started to do.'
"I figured if he didn't like it, then he'll find another place to go and hit the glass or do whatever, and he'll just ignore me."
But Cates never did.
Instead, he made it their pregame ritual.
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