Edmonton Oilers made a major mistake with Frederic contract
The Edmonton Oilers are already in trouble just a year into Trent Frederic’s eight-year contract.
It was a confusing contract from the get-go, with Oilers fans questioning why GM Stan Bowman would offer up eight years to a bottom-six player. Not only that, but it was also a 27-year-old bottom-six player who was coming off an injury-riddled season that saw Frederic put up some of the worst numbers of his career.
You would have thought that the Oilers would have had more leverage in this type of situation, but that wasn’t the case. Instead of inking him to a more reasonable contract or simply letting Frederic walk into free agency, Bowman went big with an eight-year contract that carried a $3.85 million cap hit.
It’s not like Frederic had a sparkling reputation to lean back on either. His previous career highs came during the 2023-24 season, where he notched 18 goals and 40 points with the Boston Bruins. It’s good, sure, but it surely didn’t constitute inking him to a max-term deal.
Edmonton saw something in his 23 games with the Oilers that made them think he would be a foundational player down the lineup. One year in, and the contract has managed to look so much worse than initially expected.
Frederic opened up the first year of his new deal with the worst season of his NHL career. Despite playing 74 regular-season games and staying mostly healthy, the Missouri native mustered up just four goals and seven points all season long. All the while becoming a healthy scratch on some occasions.
He had fewer points than years on his contract.
It was a pitiful season, and that followed into the playoffs, where he went scoreless in four games and was healthy-scratched for two. It may have been forgiven if he had been the physical presence Edmonton had expected, but even that part of his game dried up. Frederic had become a player that you’d barely notice on the ice for weeks on end.
And the Oilers are likely stuck with him for the long haul.
Typically, this is exactly the type of contract the Oilers should want to move away from. It’s not a ridiculous cap hit, but having it on the books until 2033 is bound to be a nuisance and prevent the team from having cap flexibility.
A buyout is likely out of the question, as that would reduce Frederic’s cap hit to around the $2 million mark but keep dead money on the books until 2040. It would help a little in the short term, but it doesn’t really provide enough relief to stretch things out that long.
Trading Frederic would be another solution, but it would be difficult. The cap hit is reasonable, but finding a team that would take on the remaining seven years of that contract will not be easy, unless the Oilers decide to add some sort of sweetener to smooth things along.
Even if a trade could be made, Frederic’s contract contains a full no-movement clause for the next three seasons, meaning he would have to approve any move. This basically removes the possibility of Edmonton dumping him to a rebuilding team, unless they convince Frederic to get on board.
That no-move clause becomes a 10-team trade list starting in 2029-30.
It’s not on the level of Darnell Nurse’s contract, which has caused significant cap issues for the Oilers, but at least Nurse provides some sort of value to the team. Frederic, at the moment, isn’t providing much at all to the on-ice product.
If Edmonton can’t move on from Frederic this summer, the hope will be that he can find a way to rebound to the player he once was with the Bruins. Even if he can, the deal would still seem a bit puzzling.
The contract looked bad from the get-go, and now it’s looking like one of the NHL’s worst.