By: Tim Burke | Follow me on Twitter / X @timsports3
The Boston Bruins’ struggles continue to start the 2024-2025 season. On Tuesday night in Toronto, the Toronto Maple Leafs shut out the Bruins. Tuesday was the third time the Bruins have been shut out this season, and we are only 16 games into the season. For further context, the Bruins were shut out three times in the previous two seasons combined.
Several key Boston Bruins, such as David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy, and Pavel Zacha, have been underperforming to begin the season. The season’s start has shocked the Bruins fans, especially how much a team with Stanley Cup aspirations has struggled to start the year.
Another key member of the Boston Bruins who has gotten off to a surprisingly slow start is upcoming Unrestricted Free Agent Trent Frederic. The former Bruins first-rounder has one goal and two assists in his first 16 games this season.
This has led to Kevin Weekes’s strange report that several teams are interested in Trent Frederic once he becomes a UFA after this season.
I believe this report exists due to his slow start, and his agent hopes to create buzz around his client’s poor start to the season, perhaps, perhaps to push Boston into engaging in extension talks. Despite the slow start, there are multiple reasons to feel optimistic about Frederic turning things around soon.
First, everybody knows he is better than this. He is coming off a career-high 18-goal campaign in 2023-2024; last season, he scored 17 goals. Second, Frederic’s PDO is extremely low.
For those unfamiliar, PDO is a stat that measures puck luck. It is the sum of shooting and save percentages while a given player is on the ice. A PDO above 100 indicates good luck, and below 100 indicates bad luck. Research has shown that players regress to the mean of 100. NHL analytics departments use PDO to make predictions, as outliers in PDO make the most straightforward predictions for a player’s future.
Why are things going so poorly for so many talented players?
Trent Frederic’s Five-on-Five PDO is 90.9, which indicates that he will see a positive regression due to his low shooting percent rate of 4.5%. He is not alone, either. David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Hampus Lindholm, Matt Poitras, and Charlie Coyle are all due to see positive regression due to their lower-than-normal PDO.
Like many of his teammates, Frederic is not producing because he needs to generate more quality scoring chances. His expected goal percentage is 39.4%, which is the third worst on the Bruins behind John Beecher and Charlie Coyle.
The real question is, why are good players having what is considered to be terrible puck luck? How is a player like Trent Frederic, who has taken massive steps forward in his development each of the last two seasons, all suddenly not generating chances? How on earth is this happening to the entire team, filled with quality veteran players such as David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Charlie Coyle? The whole start of the season has been bizarre.
Still, PDO tells us that most players regress to the mean; for the Boston Bruins, that is a positive sign. The Bruins will inevitably receive more puck luck than they have been getting to begin the season. A player like Trent Frederic, who is a vital part of the Bruins success and a key member of their secondary scoring, is bound to start getting better chances and more pucks in the net.
The Boston Bruins are experiencing a challenging start to the 2024-2025 season, marked by multiple shutouts and underperformance from critical players; however, statistical indicators suggest that positive regression is likely, particularly for players like Trent Frederic, who are expected to improve as the season progresses. This potential for turnaround offers a glimmer of hope for Frederic’s murky future and a Boston team with high aspirations.
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