To say the least, this 2025-26 regular season hasn’t been the best of years for three veteran Edmonton Oilers forwards, Adam Henrique, Trent Frederic and Andrew Mangiapane.
All three are well-paid NHLers, Frederic and Mangiapane having just signed multi-year deals with the Oilers, Frederic for eight years at $3.85 million, Mangiapane two years at $3.6 million.
All three came into the season with the expectation they’d be big part of the Oilers’ success this year, but as Edmonton has struggled, the three have all had long stretches of mediocre to poor play, culminating with Frederic and Mangiapane being sent to the pressbox. Henrique, who got injured in Tuesday night’s game against Nashville and will reportedly be out for a while, hasn’t been a healthy scratch this year, but his even strength ice-time has been cut by a minute per game this year compared to last year.
After Henrique went out early in the Nashville game, and with Frederic and Mangiapane in the pressbox the Oilers went on to have one of their best offensive games of the season, scoring six goals on 26 Grade A shots, almost double their seasonal average of 14.8 Grade A shots per game.
Mangiapane and Henrique, at least, have been strong on defence, but the offence for all three players is down, Mangiapane with 1.3 points per 60 minutes even strength, which ranks 309th out of 410 regular NHL forwards, Henrique with 0.7 points per 60, 389th out of 410, and Frederic at 0.4 per 60, 406th out of 410.
Frederic has also leaked Grade A shots against at a higher rate than any other Oilers winger.
scoring 43 games
What’s gone wrong with the players?
It’s a major conundrum for the Oilers, but my own best guess is that this year compared to last year each player has lost a step. They’re not as fast as they were. They’ve got slow boots when fast boots are essential to playing the Oil’s quick-paced, puck possession game.
The NHL has been tracking player skating speeds for five years now, since the 2021-22 season. Mangiapane bursts of fast skating (more than 32 km/h) were more frequent in previous years, 5.4 per 60 minutes from 2021-22 to 2024-25, as opposed to just 3.7 per 60 minutes this year.
He ranked as high as the 83rd percentile for high speed bursts in 2022-23, but now he’s below the 50th percentile.
His maximum speed recorded was at a high of 36.7 km/h in 2023-24, which placed him in the 79th percentile for top speed. This year he’s topped out at 35.5 km/h, below the 50th percentile.
mangiapane
The same goes for Henrique. As recently as last year he was in the 69th percentile for maximum skating speed and he ranked in the 57th percentile for speed bursts over 32km/h, with 3.9 per 60 minutes of play. This year he’s in below the 50th percentile for both maximum skating speed and fast speed bursts, dropping to just 1.9 bursts at 32 km/h+ per 60.
henrique
And we see the same with Frederic, though his drop in speed came last year in Boston and even before he was injured with a high ankle sprain in February 2025. He dropped from the 82nd percentile for maximum skating speed in 2022-23 to below the 50th percentile both this year and last year.
As for speed bursts over 32 km/h, he dropped from the high 60th percentile between 2021 and 2024, to the 53rd percentile last year and the 58th percentile this year.
frederic
It’s evident all three players have lost a step, but that’s perplexing with Mangiapane, who is just 29, and with Frederic, who is just 27. They’re not an age when you’d expect an NHL player’s speed to drop off. And, remember, Frederic’s drop-off in speed happened before his injury last February.
Henrique is another story as he’s 35, and a drop off in speed would not be unusual.
Of course, these NHL edge stats are relatively new and we’re all still trying to figure out what they mean and don’t mean. But, on the face of it, it looks like each of the three vets has indeed lost a step, and it’s no stretch to imagine this has negatively impacted their performance.
As for what can be done, that’s both a pickle and a critical question, especially with Frederic, just 27 and in the first year of his eight year contract. Surely he’s not so old that he can’t regain the speed he used to have. Surely that should be the focus for both him and for the Oilers. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to get to the bottom of why Frederic is now a step slower and figure out how they can get him to skate a step faster. This doesn’t sound like Mission Impossible, which gives me hope that Frederic will rebound and become a useful Oiler in years to come.
But until that happens, I’ll suggest that faster fourth line players such as Connor Clattenburg and Max Jones should play ahead of Frederic in the Oilers line-up.
43 games Grade A
At the Cult of Hockey