Oilers Trialing Trent Frederic In Top-Line Role

The Oilers’ decision to dole out an eight-year, $30.8MM contract extension to trade deadline acquisition Trent Frederic was one of the more eye-popping bits of news from a busy late-June period. A $3.85MM cap hit with significant trade protection throughout the contract seemed on the steep side for a player who’s averaged 13 goals and 26 points per 82 games throughout his career and didn’t play a huge role in the playoffs for Edmonton last year, averaging 11:24 of ice time per game.

Yet it looks like Frederic, now Edmonton’s fifth-highest-paid forward, will have a prime opportunity to make good on that value, at least to begin the season. He’s been getting consistent reps on the Oilers’ top line in camp alongside Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid – a unit head coach Kris Knoblauch is intent on sticking with as usual first-liner Zach Hyman begins the season on injured reserve, he told Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic.

“I want him playing with those guys for a bit to get some chemistry,” Knoblauch told Nugent-Bowman. “[Frederic] hasn’t had the opportunity to play top six much in his career. We hope that he can complement them.”

The evident hope when signing Frederic to that long-term deal was that his average stat line would be much closer to the success he enjoyed in a middle-six role with the Bruins in 2022-23 and 2023-24, not the injury-plagued season last year that saw him record just eight goals and 15 points in 58 games split between Boston and Edmonton. Over the prior two seasons, Frederic averaged an 18-18–36 scoring line per 82 games while averaging a conservative 12:51 per game. Nearly all of that production came at even strength with far lower-quality linemates than two of the top five players in the world. Scaling up his minutes and upping the quality of his teammates could conceivably make him a passable top-six solution, at least until Hyman can heal up from last season’s wrist injury and make his season debut. That’s expected to be sometime in November.

While the 2016 first-round pick is wholly untested in such an extended role, it’s clear to see the motivation for putting him there. As Nugent-Bowman writes, though, there are still some considerable kinks to work out. They played together in last night’s 4-1 exhibition loss to the Kraken, but “didn’t do much on Wednesday and was even scored against when Frederic couldn’t clear the puck at the defensive blue line.”

But where there’s an opening, there’s a potential to turn it into a long-term fit. The Oilers have the luxury of multiple top-end talents who can play center. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has seen the bulk of the minutes on the wing with McDavid and Hyman in recent years, while Draisaitl centered his own line. If Frederic works out well in a top-line role to begin the season, they can keep him there with McDavid and Hyman when the latter is healthy, allowing Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins to form a more balanced second line or to have RNH center his own unit behind Draisaitl’s.