Boston Bruins’ Moore Out For Season Following Hip Surgery

BOSTON – It looks like Boston Bruins defenseman John Moore’s season is over before it even began.

The veteran B’s defenseman underwent arthroscopic and labral tear hip surgery on March 22 by Dr. Bryan Kelly at The Hospital of Special Surgery in New York. The expected recovery time is approximately five to six months, which means he’s going to be done for this season with the Stanley Cup playoffs expected to wrap up in mid-July at the latest.

The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Moore appeared in five games with the Bruins this season when the injury bug hit and notched a pair of assists but struggled defensively with a minus-3 rating in 20:59 of ice time. The latest injury continues what’s been a very lackluster Boston Bruins experience for Moore since he signed a five-year, $13.75 million contract three years ago.

Moore’s best season for the Bruins was also his first year when he totaled four goals and 13 points in 64 games for the Black and Gold, played through a shoulder injury in the Stanley Cup playoffs that eventually required offseason surgery. Since then, Moore has played in exactly 29 games and has become an extra defenseman when he’s healthy on most nights as young D-men like Jeremy Lauzon, Conor Clifton, Jakub Zboril and Urho Vaakanainen have essentially supplanted him as top-4 options for the Bruins.

And Steve Kampfer has been a more consistent option as a seventh defenseman for the B’s capable of sitting for long periods of time, and then contributing at both ends when he does get back into the lineup.

It will be interesting to see if there comes a point when the Bruins might consider buying Moore out of the final two seasons of his contract, but there isn’t likely to be any movement with him until he recovers from this week’s hip surgery.