Derek Forbort

Forty-five penalty minutes in 54 games, and the worst chance share of any defenceman on the club.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2015-16	LAK	14	1	1	2	-1	17	0	0	0	14	7.1	11:03
2016-17	LAK	82	2	16	18	+8	54	0	0	0	100	2.0	20:07
2017-18	LAK	78	1	17	18	+18	49	0	0	0	78	1.3	20:47
2018-19	LAK	81	2	12	14	-13	52	0	0	1	75	2.7	20:45
2019-20	LAK/CGY	20	0	1	1	-5	4	0	0	0	22	0.0	17:49
2020-21	WPG	56	2	10	12	+1	35	0	0	0	67	3.0	20:45
2021-22	BOS	76	4	10	14	+2	48	0	0	1	64	6.3	18:07
2022-23	BOS	54	5	7	12	+12	23	0	2	2	38	13.2	17:44
2023-24	BOS	35	0	4	4	+8	17	0	0	0	22	0.0	17:48
2024-25	VAN	54	2	9	11	-7	45	0	0	1	39	5.1	17:06
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	550	19	87	106	+23	344	0	2	5	519	3.7	19:06

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

2 goals and 9 assists in 54 games — 11 points at 17:06 a night, minus-7, with 45 penalty minutes.

45.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 11th percentile — the worst mark of any defenceman on the roster. His ice went 21-28 against an expectation of 21.21-25.96, which says the chances were poor and the results were worse by seven.

The Finesse Game

39 attempts in 54 games at a median of 53 feet with 72 per cent from beyond 40, and 2 goals. 106 points in 550 career games.

9 assists. The first pass is the whole puck game and under a heavy forecheck it becomes the chip off the wall; the exits stop when he is the man making them.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 216 and this is the entire case for him. He blocks shots at a rate among the highest in the league, he clears the front of his own net, and he kills penalties.

45 penalty minutes in 54 games is a high rate for a third-pairing defenceman and a share of it is the stick foul of a man playing at the edge of his speed.

The Intangibles

Fifteenth overall in 2010 and 550 games and 106 points across four organisations, most of it as a penalty-killing bottom-pair defenceman.

He is 33. On a club that finished 7th in the league at suppressing chances at even strength, a third pairing at the 11th percentile is the place the structure breaks.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
39% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots at a rate among the highest in the league, he clears the front of his own net, and he kills penalties.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He blocks shots at a rate among the highest in the league, he clears the front of his own net, and he kills penalties.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He blocks shots at a rate among the highest in the league, he clears the front of his own net, and he kills penalties.”
fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“45 penalty minutes in 54 games is a high rate for a third-pairing defenceman and a share of it is the stick foul of a man playing at the edge of his speed.”
transitionhe lacks it· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is the whole puck game and under a heavy forecheck it becomes the chip off the wall; the exits stop when he is the man making them.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 754 minutes

Expected goals: 45%; 16th pct
Shot attempts: 46.8%; 23rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 28 against. Expected: 21.2 and 26.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

11th

Numbers

16th

The two rank him within 5 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 54 games

Top speed: 20.4 mph; 12th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.11 a game
Distance: 2.42 miles a game
Hardest shot: 94.0 mph; 73rd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 754 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club: VAN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.0% — 4.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: 754 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brock Boeser	49.6%	43.4%	47.2%
Conor Garland	49.8%	43.4%	53.4%
Teddy Blueger	39.5%	46.9%	46.5%

49.6% together, 43.4% for him apart and 47.2% for Boeser apart. He was worse away from Boeser, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Boeser did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

65 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.