EDMONTON, Alberta – At long last, the 2025 Stanley Cup Final begins Wednesday with a rematch of last year’s championship round: The Florida Panthers vs. the Edmonton Oilers.
For St. Louis, there’s a personal twist: Two homegrown talents – who once played roller hockey in the same basement and grew up in the same local hockey system – now go head-to-head on hockey’s biggest stage.
Let’s reintroduce them: Matthew Tkachuk of the Florida Panthers and Trent Frederic of the Edmonton Oilers.
In recent years, the childhood friends have emerged as fierce competitors, now with a title and plenty of pride on the line.
Matthew Tkachuk, a gritty, skilled winger and son of Blues great Keith Tkachuk, helped lead Florida to its first Stanley Cup title last season. He’s evolved into one of the league’s most polarizing stars: Productive, physical and never far from the action. Tkachuk was born in Arizona while his father Keith played for the then-Phoenix Coyotes, but the family moved to St. Louis for good when Keith joined the Blues in 2001.
Trent Frederic, a hard-working, physical and defensive-minded center, had spent his entire seven-year NHL career with the Boston Bruins before joining the Edmonton Oilers at this season’s trade deadline. He has stepped into a significant bottom-six forward role as the Oilers chase their first Stanley Cup title since 1990. Frederic is a native St. Louisan and his family owns Frederic Roofing, a well-known local roofing business.
Tkachuk and Frederic have long-standing ties with quite a bit in common. Both were first-round picks in the 2016 NHL Draft. Both played in St. Louis youth circuits before joining US development programs. And alongside Matthew’s younger brother and current Ottawa Senators captain Brady, they were often found skating, competing and occasionally brawling as kids.
As a 2023 Boston Globe report described, According to the Boston Globe, Tkachuk, Frederic and others – including St. Louis natives and future NHLers Clayton Keller and Luke Kunin – would routinely gather in the Frederic’s basement in their childhoods, talking hockey and play roller hockey deep into the night. Frederic’s basement was a local landmark of sorts, designed with space to rollerblade, boards to practice against and plenty of hybrid sticks and equipment.
Frederic recalled the gatherings as “great memories,” even is they sometimes ended with injuries or hospital visits.
Growing up close to the Tkachuk family, Frederic strived to not only model his game after Keith, but also former Blues captain David Backes.
In 2019, Frederic had an opportunity to enjoy a few games alongside his childhood hero Backes in Boston. Around then, a childhood photo of the two – taken early in Backes’ Blues career – went viral.
“It’s certainly humbling to see a kid – I think he was 9 when we took the picture- but from then to 12 years later playing on a line with the kid, that’s a pretty small world,” said Backes in a Daily Mail report on the photo. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Growing up in St. Louis, he was the best player, so who doesn’t want to play like the best player from your hometown?,” Frederic added in the same report.
As for Frederic and Matthew Tkachuk, while the two share many cherished childhood hockey memories, their NHL paths have diverged, recently to extents that may explain how their longtime friendship has turned into more of a rivalry.
Tkachuk has flourised as a top-line fixture for Florida, averaging near a point per game over his nine-year career (636 pts over 642 games) and recently representing Team USA in the NHL’s Four Nations midseason tournament. Tkachuk has also earned two All-Star nods and drawn some Hart and Selke Trophy consideration over the year, accolades that honor the league’s top overall player and defensive forward in any given season.
Frederic has had a respectable career, but not necessarily with the accolades or name recognition of Tkachuk. His physicality is well above NHL average, 160+ hits over a full-season pace in his career, but the scoring is not quite as abundant (around 1 point per 3 games on average), so he has largely carved out roles as a bottom-six or middle-six forward.
Beyond that, there’s another big reason their rivalry has intensified in recent years, After several seasons with the Calgary Flames, Tkachuk was traded to the Panthers, a division rival of Frederic’s longtime Bruins squad in 2022.
In the following season, the Panthers (an Eastern Conference eight-seed) took on the Bruins (the top seed who just broke an NHL record with 135 regular-season points) in the first round and pulled off a stunner, overcoming a 3-1 series deficit to upset the Bruins in seven games. The Panthers eventually advanced to their first of three consecutive Stanley Cup trips.
Two seasons later, tensions flared, at least on Frederic’s end.
Early this season, while Frederic was still playing for Boston, he accused Tkachuk of breaking hockey code, specifically signaling to start a fight, then backing out at the last possible moment.
Frederic dropped the gloves and was assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on that play, ejected early in the contest. He believed that Tkachuk may have baited him into taking a penalty.
“I didn’t know guys did that. A little disrespectful to the game,” Frederic told Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald in October 2024.
In a follow-up comments via BladeOfSteel.com, Frederic further clarified his stance.
“If they don’t want to fight, there’s not much you can do about it. That’s kind of the bummer part of it. It makes it more frustrating in that sense. We [Frederic and Tkachuk] sure were [friends]. I grew up with him since I was probably five. But yeah, it’s probably been different the last couple of years. But yeah, we’re family friends. It’s business. I don’t really care. Maybe when our careers are over, we can have a reconciliation. But right now, I can’t stand him.”
It’s unclear if Tkachuk has since responded publicly on the situation, at least based on documentation of his encounter with Frederic last October.
Whether or not that friction still lingers several months later, both players have something important to play for. Tkachuk could win his second Stanley Cup. Frederic could win his first.
And either way, St. Louis is guaranteed to celebrate at least one homegrown star lifting the Stanley Cup soon.
Puck drop for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT Wednesday on TNT. The Stanley Cup Finial round is a best-of-seven series that will run through somewhere between June 12 and June 20, depending on how many games are needed.