It hasn’t been an easy early season for Trent Frederic.
After scoring opening night against Florida, the bruising Bruins forward went a whopping 17 games without lighting the lamp for a team that has struggled offensively. Frederic’s early goal-scoring slump had led to him pretty routinely changing line partners and lines as the B’s coaching staff tried to find the right way to spark him.
The experimentation with Frederic;s station among the forward group may not come to a close, of course, but the St. Louis product stepped up and scored a pair of goals in a breakout game that ultimately ended badly in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Blues at TD Garden on Saturday afternoon. The one thing his offensive awakening may end up doing is getting Frederic to stop pressing so hard to get results after struggling to tap into his offense during an all-important contract year for him.
“It was not the best [start to the season]…definitely not the start that I wanted, but there’s a lot of season left,” said an optimistic Frederic to Boston Sports Journal prior to busting out of his slump on Saturday. “I just need to keep working hard and keep it simple. A lot of it is in the head and I need to stop thinking so much because that slows down my game.
“If I can get away from that and go play hockey then I can be a good player. I just need to go back to what I’m good at.”
His goals definitely looked instinctual – and being around the net front, which he was most definitely good at -- as it was much more reading and reacting to his linemates rather than trying to overdo it with the puck on his stick. The first was a simple tap-in rebound score after Georgii Merkulov’s initial tip attempt was stopped, and the second was an old-fashioned redirect off a Mason Lohrei point shot.
Two goals for Trent Frederic…he needed a game like this pic.twitter.com/OCHraInLRK
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) November 16, 2024
Jim Montgomery said unlocking his offense comes down to Frederic playing a little more around the front of the net and utilizing his ideal size and strength to win battles and finish off plays.
“I think he was in the right spots. That’s where Freddy needs to be is in the net front. He was in that third circle that we talk about a lot,” said Montgomery. “You got to get to the third circle between the two [faceoff] circles. It’s a smaller circle, but that is where the goals are going to get scored.”
When Frederic was in the middle of his struggles, he was playing a little further and higher away from the net and third “third circle” in the slot, and perhaps throwing the puck back to the points a little too much rather than simply tossing it behind the net and going to work with puck possession and board-rattling heaviness.
That’s exactly what he was doing with Merkulov and Charlie Coyle to good effect on Saturday afternoon for a third line that produced a pair of goals for the Black and Gold. Now it becomes a matter of Frederic gaining a little greater consistency, which goes hand-in-hand with more ice time if the Bruins can steer a little more away from the special teams play that keeps the 26-year-old former first-round pick glued to the bench.
That, in turn, will allow him to start producing like he did last season when he posted career highs with 18 goals and 40 points in 82 games, and raised the bar for expectations headed into this season. That dynamic combined with Frederic staring at possible unrestricted free agency following this season definitely can’t be underrated acting as a 1-2 pressure combo that the longtime B’s forward is playing with it hanging over his head.
“[The contract status] is definitely a thing in your head, but I feel like this is kind of been every year for me where I’m either trying to make it or being on an entry level and trying to stay in the NHL…and then you sign a two-year deal where it’s kind of the same thing and nothing is guaranteed,” said Frederic to Boston Sports Journal. “I’ve always been in a situation where I’m playing for the next day, and I think that’s kind of always been my mindset.
“I don’t think it’s been in my head, but it’s definitely something that’s weird to sometimes think about when I’m at home or whatever. You just never know and that’s what more has popped in my head. It sounds weird, but it feels like every year I’ve been playing for that next year because I’ve never been on more than a two-year deal, or I guess an entry-level deal. It’s always been something [of a contract situation] where they could get rid of you or send you down [if you aren’t performing]. I don’t think ‘comfortable’ has ever been [what I’ve felt].”
It was also good to see that Frederic has never lost his self-effacing sense of humor either, even amidst an offensive slump throughout most of the first month plus of a pivotal NHL season for him.
“That’s kind of my mindset and I do truly think that will happen,” said a smiling Frederic to Boston Sports Journal when asked if he foresees a contract extension coming with the Bruins. “If I keep playing like this, I don’t know if [expletive] anybody is gonna want me. All I can do is do what I can do, keep playing hard and make it so that they have to want [to keep] me.”
ONE-TIMERS
*Once again, it’s time to examine what exactly is the Bruins’ fascination with Riley Tufte? The Bruins forward was called back up to Boston ahead of Saturday’s matinee loss to the Blues after scoring three goals in six games for the Providence Bruins. He was presumably tapped because he’s done more than a disappointing Fabian Lysell has to this point in the AHL season and because Max Jones has only one game played since being waived down to Providence as well.
Tufte was mostly invisible aside from an early preseason goal during training camp after signing as a free agent on July 1, and then did nothing in a few regular season stints early before being demoted down to the AHL.
So what did Tufte do in his callup with Johnny Beecher scratched and Tyler Johnson away from the team for personal reasons? He finished with zero shots on net and a minus-2 in seven plus minutes of ice time in another invisible, ineffective performance for a 6-foot-6 player that should at least make you notice him on the ice. There’s little doubt we’ll see Max Jones again at the NHL level at some point this season, but not sure the Bruins can afford to keep rolling out a player that’s not doing anything of note on a Black and Gold hockey club that is throwing way too many passengers over the boards on a nightly basis.
*Interesting nugget from Jim Montgomery on Saturday when asked how he’s coaching this season’s group any differently, or the same, as he coaches the two previous incarnations over the last two seasons. Clearly, they want to be a forecheck team in the mold of the Florida Panthers based on what they’ve said publicly and based on the personnel they brought in this summer, but they have a lot of work to get to that point.
Like, a lot of work.
“You have to be consistent, and you have to be yourself,” said Jim Montgomery. “In Year One we could possess [the puck] and we could forecheck. Last year we went to more of a forechecking group and that’s what we think this group is [going to be] too just in the way that we constructed it.”