The Edmonton Oilers are just over a month into the 2025-26 season, and like any team with high expectations, there’s plenty to unpack, with some players quietly putting up strong starts, while others are still trying to round out their game.

With that in mind, let’s dive into five Oilers thoughts, from Evan Bouchard’s play and Adam Henrique’s strong start to which players could be ending their scoring drought, the missing gamesmanship, and how the Oilers need more out of Trent Frederic.

The start of the season for Evan Bouchard, after signing a massive $10.5 million-a-season contract, has been nothing short of a nightmare straight out of The Amityville Horror, filled with ghoulish defensive blunders.

A Stephen King–like novel could be written about his horrific blown defensive coverages and giveaways, and at this point, there are no excuses for them. And many years from now, scientists will need to run a full lab experiment and figure out why he starts seasons so slowly, only to turn into a playoff beast. For now, though, it’s about steadily building his game and regaining that confidence, one step at a time, and hopefully he can build off the good performance he had last game against the Dallas Stars.

By my count, he had at least three good defensive plays against the Stars, including some ‘head-on-a-swivel’ moments, breaking up slot chances and getting a good stick on a Stars 2-on-1 in OT. He led all Oilers with 25:40 of ice time, tallied an assist, and at 5v5 posted an 8-1 edge in shots and a 9-3 advantage in scoring chances.

The Oilers’ highest-paid blueliner has a long way to go before you can say he’s turned the page, but hopefully, he can build off his last game.

The 35-year-old Adam Henrique is off to a strong start this season, currently on pace for 32 points, which would be an improvement over the 27 he posted last year.

His two-way game has also been solid. The newest member of the 1,000-game club leads the team with 18 blocks, and his 5.27 blocks per 60 minutes rank 14th in the NHL. Additionally, he’s been an ace in the faceoff circle, boasting a 61.31% win rate that leads the Oilers, while also ranking third among forwards in penalty-kill minutes. On top of that, according to the latest Oilersnation power rankings, he’s quietly crept into the top three most handsome players in the league.

Additionally, over the last five games, he’s played at the 3C spot between Matt Savoie and Trent Frederic, and according to Natural Stat Trick, the trio has posted 14–10 shots for and 7–5 in high-danger chances in that span, while scoring one goal and giving up just one. The Kris Knoblauch blender has been in full effect this season, but I’d like to see that trio stay together a bit longer. They’re not hurting the team, their chemistry seems to be building, and you get the sense they’re due to score more often.

Last season, Kris Knoblauch explained a theory that when players reach around five or six expected goals (xGF), they’re due to score within the next stretch of games. It’s a theory I’ve been keeping an eye on since, and it’s kind of impressive how often it’s hit the mark, or come pretty close.

For example, Ty Emberson hadn’t scored yet when he reached a 5.06 xGF in his ninth game of the season and two games later, in his 11th, he scored his first of the campaign.

Given that theory, a couple of players could potentially end their scoring drought soon, one being Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. The last time he found the back of the net was eight games ago, on Oct. 23 against the Montreal Canadiens, and since then, he’s built up a 7.92 xGF. Meanwhile, Brett Kulak — still searching for his first of the season — sits at a juicy 9.62 xGF. I’m not saying they’re guaranteed to score next game, but based on Knoblauch’s theory, the odds look pretty good.

The Oilers’ 6-5-4 record after 15 games isn’t the worst, but it’s not ideal, considering they’re Stanley Cup contenders. Of course, this seems to be the pattern of this era of Oilers — start slow to begin the year, then pick it up at some point and start stringing together consecutive wins.

But the question I have is, when is that “some point” going to happen? Last season, I can almost pinpoint the moment the team started to really give a damn — it was after they lost their first three games of the season and were down 3–2 to the Philadelphia Flyers in the fourth game. Sean Couturier ran into Stuart Skinner, and Troy Stecher immediately came to his goaltender’s defence and dropped the gloves.

Despite giving up nearly six inches and close to 30 pounds, he still hung in there and threw ’em with the Flyers’ captain. Right after that, Corey Perry dropped the mitts with Joel Farabee, firing up all of Rogers Place and, more importantly, his Oilers teammates, and they came back and won, winning the next game as well.

I feel there hasn’t been that rallying moment yet for the Oilers this season, a defining point where, looking back at the end of the season, one can say, “Aha! That’s where they turned things around!”

Also, speaking of Perry, the Oilers definitely miss him, but they just couldn’t afford to keep him. However, when things weren’t going right or when the Oilers looked flat or were losing momentum, he’d do whatever it took: a glove in someone’s face, challenging a guy to a fight, falling on a goalie, pretty much anything to get his team going again. The Oilers need someone to step up in that department, and that’s part of the reason they re-signed Trent Frederic to such a long-term deal, which we’ll talk about next.

Re-signing Frederic to a long-term contract seemed to check a lot of important boxes: size, physicality, scoring ability, and pest-like gamesmanship. But 15 games into the season, with only one goal, he’s really only shown one of those traits, sitting second on the Oilers in hits with 46.

Simply put, the Oilers need more out of Frederic — more points on the scoresheet, more gamesmanship, and all in all, more signs that he gives a damn out on the ice.

That said, I feel, though, that he may have experienced a bit of an identity crisis to start the season. Playing on the first line with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid for a few games in the preseason and in the first couple of games to start the year may have had him questioning, Am I a scorer, or a crash-and-banger? Or both? Playing alongside the dynamic duo, where you have to think and react quickly and make plays, is very different from getting the puck deep and then crushing a D-man.

It feels like, since then, he’s had to recalibrate and get back to his basic instincts. Overall, his start to the season is not ideal for someone coming off signing a long-term contract, but I’m not worried just yet — after all, we’re only 15 games into the long 82-game grind. There’s a lot of hockey left, folks.

On that note, I feel his play is trending upward. He’s thrown a combined 11 hits over the last two games, and as noted earlier, it seems he’s settling in nicely on the third line with linemates Henrique and Matt Savoie. They’re starting to develop a bit of chemistry, and as mentioned, they’ve outshot the opposition 14-10 over the last five games.

Moreover, Frederic’s expected goals for percentage has been 74.37% and 78.45% in the last two games. On top of that, we saw the 27-year-olds ‘give a crap’ meter rise a little bit against the Stars, getting in the face of Lian Bichsel after he ran Savoie into the boards.

At times this season, the Oilers have looked like they’re playing on cruise control, almost like their minds are already at Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. That said, moving forward, it’s an opportunity for Frederic to realize that Corey Perry and Evander Kane are no longer on the team, and the dollars that could’ve been spent on them to bring that gamesmanship are now being spent on him. Frederic isn’t expected to score every night, but what he can bring consistently is relentless effort, a side of nastiness, and the spark his team needs when they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.

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