N oah Philp is all alone behind the net. He helped launch the sequence of events that has just unfolded in the Nashville Predators’ zone — winning a battle along the boards, before firing an outlet pass to Corey Perry and then getting it back after Perry played keepaway with the Preds for a moment or two — and now has less than a second to make his next move.
With the puck on his stick, Philp quickly scans the ice for linemates then tees up Drake Caggiula for a one-timer. Juuse Saros gets a pad on the attempt, but Perry feasts on the rebound, giving the Oilers an early 2-1 edge in what will be a 5-1 victory for the visitors on Halloween, their fifth win of the young 2024-25 season.
It isn’t the prettiest goal scored by the team in white that night, but it is a puck worth keeping. Not for the veteran Perry, or for Caggiula, who makes sure to scoop it up after Saros bats it out from the back of his net, but for their 26-year-old rookie linemate.
Philp’s first career NHL point, halfway through the first period of his first NHL game, is a milestone made all the more momentous considering the journey to get there.
Eight months before his NHL debut, Philp was out of hockey entirely. He hadn’t so much as picked up a stick since his Bakersfield Condors, AHL affiliate of the Oilers, were ousted by Abbotsford in the first round of the Calder Cup Playoffs in April 2023. Shortly after that 37-point rookie campaign with the club wrapped up, Philp released a statement via the Condors to say he was grateful for his experience with Bakersfield and the Oilers organization but felt it was time to shift his focus to life outside the rink.
When Philp realized last spring that he couldn’t stay away from the game, nearly a full year after taking what he’d believed were his final strides as a pro, he found himself stepping into his hometown arena in Canmore, Alta., curious about the state of his skills.
“I hadn’t stepped on the ice, obviously, in a while and I was just kind of thinking, ‘I wonder if I still got it,’” he says. “I didn’t think too much about it — it was just a public skate, and I was like, ‘I’ll go and see what it feels like, get a little sweat.’”
Gliding across the sheet that day in Canmore, where he first fell in love with the game, Philp felt great.
“I actually felt way better than I thought,” he says, thinking back to that first skating session. “That was around the time when I thought, ‘I think I could do this again.’ That I really wanted to. For me, I wanted to be able to give it everything — which I had, my whole life. And at that point [in the spring of 2023], I wasn’t. So, I felt, you know, if I’m ready to give it everything again, I’ll come back.”
P hilp’s earliest hockey memories are of games on the outdoor rink in Canmore, just a two-minute walk from his childhood home, with the mountains serving as audience and backdrop.
“Me and my brothers and my dad, everybody, we’d go out there as much as we could during wintertime and couldn’t really get enough of it,” says Philp.
His love for hockey has always been a passion shared with his family. Up until his departure from the sport, Philp’s path to the pros had followed uncannily close to that cut by his older brother, Luke. Both Philps started playing with the Canmore Eagles of the AJHL — a gateway league to the WHL — at age 16, suiting up for their hometown squad. Both made the jump to the WHL with the Kootenay Ice despite going undrafted, and went on to play four years in the league. Neither heard their name called in the NHL draft once eligible, and both opted to suit up with the University of Alberta — Noah actually moved into Luke’s vacated room there — once their WHL days wrapped. Both spent three years on the USports circuit with the Golden Bears before earning an NHL shot as an undrafted free agent, Luke signing a two-year entry-level deal with the Calgary Flames in the spring of 2019 and Noah going to the other side of the Battle of Alberta with a one-year deal with Edmonton in the spring of 2022.
Given their parallel paths, it’s only fitting that Luke, who is currently with the AHL’s Hershey Bears, played such a crucial role in his brother’s return to hockey, too, teaming up with their friend Sam Jones to help Noah in his summer-long comeback bid.
After that first public skate, when he realized he was again ready to give his all to the game, Philp immediately set his sights on the pros. Only, he didn’t exactly know what that meant.
“I called my agent and said, ‘Hey, I want to play — what are my options?’” Philp says of the planning stage of his comeback. “I didn’t really know how Edmonton would respond. But then, obviously when I heard that they’d be willing to give me another chance, I was very pleasantly surprised. What an amazing opportunity and pretty great of them to give me that chance and belief.”
The Oilers had retained his RFA rights in 2023 and extended an early training camp invite when they learned of Philp’s quest to return. Setting his focus on that camp and the 2024-25 regular season to follow, Philp found himself tasked with shaking off a year’s worth of rust in a six-month span. So, where to begin?
“Day one, getting back onto the ice, my priority was skating,” he says, “almost building the basics again.”
Philp trusted his own ability to get his skating back to where it needed to be, but needed an assist with strength and conditioning. His friend Jones, who plays professionally in England and trains back home in Canmore during the summer months, is also a personal trainer and designed an off-ice training regimen. “I said, ‘We should combine our skillset — you build me a program that’s going to get me stronger, I’ll build an on-ice program that I think will work’,” says Philp.
With daily ice and gym times secured at the Canmore Rec Centre, the three quickly recognized an opportunity to share their training sessions with other players in the area — some at the junior level; some local pros. “The whole idea, which my brother Luke, Sam and I discussed, was basically doing what we always do — train in the summer — but do it with other players, with guys who are younger, looking to break into professional or that sort of thing,” explains Philp. Just like that, Be A Pro was born.
The intense sessions and increased competition and camaraderie drummed up between members of the training squad elevated Philp’s game, of course, and offered something new to him: the chance to see the game through a coach’s lens. In his gear on the ice, Philp drew up drills on the board and walked his peers through them before jumping into the action himself.
“I just thought it was pretty motivating for the younger guys to not just have someone tell you to do something, but to just do it with you,” he says. “And I thought it was extremely motivating for myself, too, because it is tough sometimes if you’re just working out in the gym by yourself and then you’re going and skating. But it was so much fun for me to build those programs and then have, you know, younger guys, and watching them improve. I think it was a lot of learning both ways — for them and for me.”
Every day brought more drills, sharper skating sessions, heavier workouts. Tuesdays and Thursdays saw the group hit a nearby field for sprints and other off-ice conditioning. The biggest challenge during these months of training were in the smallest details — the fine-tuning of his skating, the smallest touches when stickhandling. Those are still parts of his game he works at daily.
“All these little puck skills that you learn and adapt and were so, like, just in your DNA at that point [before stepping away from the sport] — taking that much time off, that’s felt like an adjustment,” he says. Returning to the game with fresh eyes has allowed Philp to see his training and development in a different light, one that showed him the true value of ensuring he always has a strong foundation to lean back on when he hits a hurdle. “Getting back to working every single day on skating and the fundamentals for at least the first chunk of practice,” he says of a core emphasis of his new approach. “I think it’s an overlooked thing that, you know, I did because I was away for so long. But even now, I still find that when I’m struggling or I want to get better, a lot of the time, it’s just like, get back to making sure you’re strong on your feet. Doing these simple things.”
C ome September, Philp arrived early at training camp to skate with other Oilers prospects and immediately saw the fruits of his summer labour. Edmonton’s management team and coaching staff did, too.
“I was told that I had turned a few heads in camp and that they were really impressed with how I came back and how I approached coming back,” Philp remembers.
His camp stint extended all the way to the final few cuts, his assignment to AHL Bakersfield coming the day before the Oilers submitted their opening night roster. In sending the promising forward to the Condors, where he’d spent the 2022-23 season prior to stepping away, Edmonton tasked him with further fine-tuning his skills through in-game reps.
“They just said, ‘We really like what you bring to the table and we want you to go and play as much as you can and get more reps in,’” Philp says. “What I absolutely agree with them on is that those little tiny puck skills and that sort of thing is what I feel like I lost most from that time off.”
Philp tallied an assist in his first game back in the pros, and scored his first goal of the season three games later, adding a second two games after that. Once again, he earned the notice of Oilers brass. And it wasn’t long before he was up with the big club. When captain Connor McDavid went down with an ankle injury at the end of October, Philp and Caggiula got the call — only, when it came, Philp almost missed it. He’d had his phone on Do Not Disturb, out of sight and out of mind as he made dinner with his wife, ZJ.
It was ZJ who finally answered after initially spotting and ignoring the unknown number on her own phone. Turns out it was Oilers assistant general manager and Condors GM Keith Gretzky, urgently trying to get hold of Philp. The club was looking to bring up a few forwards to fill out the fourth line, he explained, as head coach Kris Knoblauch shifted his lines without the game’s biggest star. Eight months after returning to the sport, it was time for Philp to take the biggest step of his hockey career.
“Everyone was so positive,” Philp says of his pregame experience ahead of his NHL debut. “The amount of times I heard, like, ‘Just go enjoy it,’ really allowed me to do that. So, I think it really took the pressure off. The rookie lap with no helmet was jokes, but I was actually pretty nervous for that part. Then after that, it felt like just another day.”
His parents and wife made the trip to Nashville to see his debut, and watching the highlight of his family in the stands celebrating his first NHL point, he says, felt even better than scoring it.
Philp’s first NHL stint lasted three games, including a Battle of Alberta matchup in just his second career contest — fitting for a kid from Canmore, who had plenty of family members in Calgary for the tilt. He was returned to Bakersfield in early November, once again tasked with getting reps and honing his game, and his strong performance back with the Condors — he now has nine goals and 17 points in 28 AHL games this season — earned him a second look with Edmonton. He was called up earlier this week as the club auditions a new look for its bottom six.
Even from afar, now, he feels the support of his family, and his hometown, every step of his career — from his very first strides as a kid to his journey back to the game he loves. Be A Pro is part of that now, too, with plans to develop the program into an opportunity to give back to the community that both raised and revived his career.
“All corners of the community, it felt like the whole community was on my side,” he says. “Canmore, as a whole, I’m so proud to say that I’m from there.”