FlamesNation player evaluation: Derek Forbort

Forbort is a steady defenseman who isn’t particularly quick but who can lay the body and make simple plays with the puck. He can certainly be counted on to kill penalties and break up plays with his good stick.

It’s always a challenge to look at these sorts of players from an analytical perspective, particularly when they miss three-quarters of the season with an unfortunate back injury. The Flames needed a guy who could play a reliable defense-first game when both Mark Giordano and Travis Hamonic went down with ailments of their own in advance of the trade deadline in March and, while Forbort certainly prioritizes defense first in his game, he doesn’t do nearly as good a job of actually playing it as Giordano or even Hamonic.

With the Kings this year, Forbort was used primarily in a bottom-four role after returning from injury, although he still saw some time with his former partner, Drew Doughty. Under Todd McLellan, the Kings are a well-coached team that makes up for its lack of NHL-ready talent by playing a high-volume offensive style that sometimes sacrifices shot quality for quantity. In Forbort’s small sample on the ice this year, however, the Kings did an okay job at generating quality shots from the slot and out-chancing the opposition.

That said, Forbort was hardly alone in that regard and his on-ice metrics paled relative to those of his Kings teammates. He was a non-factor offensively in terms of counting stats and analytics once he got to Calgary, although his expected goals against/60 figure of 2.04 ranked only behind Mark Jankowski in terms of regular skaters. Once again, Forbort’s seven-game sample size is really too small to glean anything earth-shattering from.

Broadly, in his small stretch of games this year, Forbort was decent at preventing high-quality chances from reaching his team’s net, but he didn’t do a ton in the offensive zone and there should be concerns about the volume of shots his teams allowed when he was on the ice. He often looked a little slow and shaky with the puck during the Flames’ post-season series against Winnipeg and Dallas; he was deployed as the Flames’ #5 defender in the playoffs, logging an average of 17:29 per night.

Mark Giordano | Sean Monahan | Sam Bennett | Johnny Gaudreau | Elias Lindholm | Dillon Dube | Milan Lucic | Rasmus Andersson | Andrew Mangiapane | Cam Talbot | David Rittich | Noah Hanifin | Matthew Tkachuk | Derek Ryan | Travis Hamonic | Tobias Rieder | TJ Brodie | Zac Rinaldo | Oliver Kylington | Erik Gustafsson | Mark Jankowski | Mikael Backlund