{"id":176862,"date":"2025-09-29T04:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T04:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/176862\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T04:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T04:11:07","slug":"frederic-settles-in-alongside-mcdavid-draisaitl-as-oilers-beat-canucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/176862\/","title":{"rendered":"Frederic settles in alongside McDavid, Draisaitl as Oilers beat Canucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Playing on a line with Connor McDavid<\/a> and Leon Draisaitl<\/a> may sound like a dream job for Trent Frederic<\/a>. But he\u2019ll tell you, playing alongside Patrice Bergeron in Boston was also a plum assignment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played with Bergy once,\u201d Frederic said on Sunday. \u201cI ran into him and broke his nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their first pre-season outing last week, the Edmonton Oilers<\/a>‘ top line was, er, less than stellar. They went minus-3 across the board, no points, and a forgettable pre-season debut, in a 4-1 loss to Seattle.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou play with the best two players in the world and go minus-3? I was a little nervous tonight,\u201d Frederic laughed after Sunday\u2019s win.<\/p>\n

The McDavid line dominated a Vancouver Canucks lineup that featured starter Thatcher Demko, four NHL defencemen, and a smattering of regulars at forward, scoring every goal in a 4-3 Oilers victory. Frederic wreaked havoc in the Canucks crease on the first goal, then scored the second one on a rebound of a McDavid shot.<\/p>\n

Draisaitl had two goals and four points, McDavid had a goal and two helpers, while Frederic went 1-1-2 \u2014\u00a0a bounce-back game for what head coach Kris Knoblauch hopes will be the top line on Opening Night, Oct. 8<\/p>\n

\u201cFreddie\u2019s just got to be able to get them the puck, make plays once in a while, and create chaos in front of the net,\u201d Knoblauch said.<\/p>\n

What is the key ingredient for the third wheel on that line?<\/p>\n

\u201cPatience,\u201d said Draisaitl. \u201cSometimes you feel like you\u2019re not in the game the way Connor and I play. He just needs to create space, get to the net and (feel like he is) part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a fine line between retrieving pucks, standing in the crease, helping McDavid and Draisaitl and staying out of their way. Zach Hyman has the gig down, but with him out for a month, it\u2019s Frederic who is cramming for the Game 1 test.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a smart hockey mind,\u201d Draisaitl said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s willing to go to the hard areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knoblauch said that Vasily Podkolzin will return from his father\u2019s funeral in Moscow on Tuesday, and will get in the last preseason game, Friday in Seattle. Max Jones will also be healthy enough to get in another game, as well.<\/p>\n

With two pre-season games left on the Oilers’ schedule, let\u2019s focus down on some key players at camp:<\/p>\n

You can see the try in Ike Howard\u2019s game. No one is saying he isn\u2019t working hard to succeed, or that he thinks success will come easily without putting in the proper effort \u2014\u00a0but his learning curve may simply be too steep for one pre-season.<\/p>\n

Howard skated on a line with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Andrew Mangiapane on Sunday, and that line was simply OK against Vancouver. As for Howard, his goal has to be to hold on to pucks at this level, as so far we\u2019ve seen a player who struggles to further the play or find elongated touches in open ice.<\/p>\n

At one point, he battled and kept a play alive by stripping a Canucks defenceman. The try is there. But the game that got Howard here has not been so evident throughout the pre-season, and it\u2019s only going to get harder from here.<\/p>\n

The ultimate barometer for a 21-year-old, first-year pro is this: Is his development better served playing top minutes in the AHL, or fighting for ice time at a higher level in the NHL?<\/p>\n

Unless the Oilers are willing to stretch this apprenticeship into the regular season, we don\u2019t see how some time in Bakersfield would not be the best thing for Howard, based on what we\u2019ve seen so far in camp.<\/p>\n

Big picture: We are on the record predicting a bounce-back season for the Oilers\u2019 26-year-old goalie. Small picture: After a shaky opening start to the pre-season, Skinner was much better in his second start Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Skinner was beaten up high off the Frederic turnover, on a centring pass that ricocheted off Ekholm\u2019s skate in the low slot, and on a cross-ice one-timer with the Canucks goalie pulled. But he was on the puck, solid with his rebounds, and looked like he\u2019s on the path to allowing this scribe\u2019s prediction to have a chance of being right.<\/p>\n

Samanski isn\u2019t going to make the team, OK?<\/p>\n

But on a franchise that has dealt away so many draft picks in pursuit of a Stanley Cup, give GM Stan Bowman some credit for filling the funnel with three European free agents who have all shown promise this fall.<\/p>\n

Samanski, 23, may well play in the NHL. Not now, but in the next couple of years.<\/p>\n

The jury is still out on centre David Tomasek, who we believe will show better as the frenetic state of pre-season hockey polishes up as rosters fill up with NHL veterans.<\/p>\n

And defenceman Atro Leppanen had another good showing Sunday, and Knoblauch says he\u2019ll get one more preseason start. He\u2019ll also require some AHL time as well, but like the others, you can\u2019t say it\u2019s impossible to see a scenario in which Leppanen crafts a game that is NHL worthy one day.<\/p>\n

Samanski \u2014\u00a0who was given a shift alongside countryman Draisaitl late in Sunday\u2019s game, perhaps a reward for a stellar camp \u2014\u00a0was robbed of his second pre-season goal by Thatcher Demko in the third period in another responsible outing. If he can make Germany\u2019s Olympic team and gain some experience in Bako, who knows: There may be a six-foot-two, middle-six winger here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Playing on a line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl may sound like a dream job for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-176862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}