This past summer, the Edmonton Oilers extended Trent Frederic to an eight-year contract at a $3.85M AAV. The 27-year-old forward was traded to Edmonton from the Boston Bruins at the trade deadline, skating in just one regular-season game for the team due to a high-ankle sprain, though he did appear in all 22 of Edmonton’s postseason games.

However, Frederic’s start to his first season on his new contract has been far from ideal. Through 16 games thus far, Frederic has just a single point – a goal against the Rangers in Game 3 – in 16 games, tied for the lowest among all of Edmonton’s forwards. Of course, it is quite early into the season, but Frederic already saw a dip in production with Boston in the 2024-25 regular-season, and in the 2025 playoffs with Edmonton, he had just 4 points in 22 games. That’s certainly not an encouraging trend.

So, should the Oilers be concerned about Frederic’s performance to begin the year? Let’s take a closer look.

We’ll begin with the production totals. Here is a timeline of Frederic’s year-by-year 5-on-5 points per hour rate:

Frederic had a string of three very solid seasons of production in Boston from 2021-22 through 2023-24, producing at steadily increasing rates of 1.7, 2.0, and 2.1 5-on-5 points per hour in those three seasons respectively. Overall, his production rate was about ~1.94 overall. For reference, that ranked higher than the likes of Mika Zibanejad, Cole Caufield, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

However, he saw a steep decline in 2024-25 where he produced just 1.03 points per hour, hardly above replacement-level. Indeed, part of it could simply be attributed to subpar puck luck, as his on-ice shooting percentage of 6.5 percent that season was considerably lower than the 10.3 percent from the prior two seasons. But no matter what metric you looked at – from individual shots per game to on-ice expected goals and high-danger chances per hour – Frederic was much worse in 2024-25 with the Bruins.

So far this season, Frederic has just one point in 200 minutes of 5-on-5 play, an abysmal 0.3 points per hour rate. Again, it should be noted that the on-ice shooting percentage is at a very low 5.7 percent; that’s not going to stay that way for the entire season. But (also) again, Frederic’s non-production numbers have been even worse. So far this season with the Oilers, he has averaged just 4.7 shots per hour, a significant decline from his ~8+ shots per hour rate with Boston a couple of years back.

Furthermore, let’s just assume that Frederic’s on-ice shooting percentage this season was at its career average from his past five seasons in Boston (~7-8%) for argument’s sake. If that were the case, he would be on-ice for just about ~2 more goals this season. Even if he had a point on both those goals in this hypothetical scenario, that would still leave his 5-on-5 points per hour rate at 0.95, still well below his peak in Boston. Thus, his lack of production cannot be attributed to poor puck luck alone.

Of course, you may argue that production isn’t everything. I agree. But Frederic isn’t exactly lighting it up in any other facets of the game.

In terms of on-ice underlying numbers at 5-on-5, he has a mediocre 47 CF% and 49 xG%, and despite playing against relatively weak competition, he has been on-ice for the second highest number of high-danger chances against per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play among all Oiler forwards. It was not always like this, as Frederic’s strong forechecking led to above-average possession and defensive results with Boston, but he has been much less effective in this facet in Edmonton.

Sure, he’s been relatively physical in terms of the NHL’s hits per 60 metric, but it doesn’t nearly make up for the fact that his offence has been non-existent and that he’s been leaking chances against. Frederic also doesn’t play on Edmonton’s power-play nor penalty-killing units either. All-in-all, this is hugely disappointing.

So, what’s exactly going on with Frederic? Is this merely a small-sample slump at the beginning of the season (which, in fairness, is far from atypical for players on this team) that he could bounce back from, or is this the player that he now is?

Now, perhaps there is some reason to hope. For one, the Oilers are beginning to deploy him in a more consistent role.

To begin the season, Frederic was on the top-line next to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. But primarily being a bottom-six player for his entire career, I don’t think this was the right role for him. Perhaps they were attempting to replicate what Pat Maroon once did, but it simply was not working. Then, they tried him for a couple of games at 3C, but he was not overly effective in that role either.

Finally, for the past few weeks, he has been regularly playing as a winger in the bottom-six. It is reasonable to potentially attribute his struggles to Kris Knoblauch’s constant line-shuffling, and so perhaps he should improve as he plays consistent minutes in a consistent environment. It’s also worth noting that Frederic is coming off a high-ankle sprain, an injury that takes time for most players to fully recover from. It is certainly reasonable to believe that he could be much better towards the second half of the season.

That being said, there are multiple warning signs here that suggest that Frederic may simply not be as impactful as hoped, such as his 2024-25 regular-season performance even before his ankle injury. The fact remains that he has yet to prove himself as an impactful player in his time in Edmonton.

We’ll see how it all plays out as the season goes on.

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