New Edmonton Oilers trade addition Frederic may not even play in regular season
The Edmonton Oilers have officially made their opening move of the 2025 NHL trade deadline, but the main piece may not play this season.
Trent Frederic was the big name coming to the Oilers in today’s three-team trade with the Boston Bruins and New Jersey Devils. The 27-year-old physical forward will automatically become Edmonton’s most aggressive player up front, standing at six-foot-three and 221lbs. He also has a bit of a scoring touch, having tallied 18 and 17 goals in his last two seasons, respectively.
Frederic should help Edmonton’s bottom-six group and could get some reps with Leon Draisaitl on the second line. There is just one major issue: Frederic is injured and may not be ready to play until the playoffs.
Frederic suffered a lower-body injury late last month and has been out of action for the past week. According to TSN’s Chris Johnston, there is a chance that the Oilers will have to put their new trade addition on LTIR and wait until the playoffs for him to make his debut.
An interesting wrinkle to the #oilers acquisition of Trent Frederic: At this point, there's no indication if he'll be healthy enough to play before the playoffs. So there's a chance he can remain on LTIR for the balance of the season.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) March 4, 2025
This is far from ideal, considering that the Oilers gave up two pretty decent prospects along with two draft picks to acquire his services. There is no doubt that Frederic is a useful player for this Edmonton team when healthy, but he will do no good sitting on the sidelines.
Further, it’s a big risk to assume that a new addition can smoothly transition onto a new team in a high-pressure situation like the playoffs.
The good news is that Oilers GM Stan Bowman seems to be confident that Frederic will play some regular-season games. He made a point to get a lot of retention on Frederic’s contract, which wouldn’t have mattered if the Oilers weren’t expecting him to play in the regular season.
If he wasn’t able to play until the playoffs, Edmonton would have been able to add his cap hit onto the roster without any issue as the cap does not continue into the postseason. It’s a similar situation surrounding Evander Kane, whose health status remains unclear heading into the deadline.
This shouldn’t be the only deal that Bowman makes to help this Oilers team get over the hump. Frederic, if healthy, will help add some much-needed snarl to this club, but it isn’t likely that he will provide that scoring touch that currently lacks in the top-six.
We’ll see if we have some more moves in the next 72 hours.