Boston Bruins’ Forbort Out For Rest Of Regular Season

The Boston Bruins will have another injury to deal with over the final month of the regular season as shutdown defenseman Derek Forbort has been ruled out from returning prior to the playoffs with a lower body injury.

The good news is that he’s not expected to need surgery after suffering the injury blocking a shot with his leg in their shutout win over Winnipeg last Thursday night. Forbort missed the final two games of the five game road swing through the NHL’s various winter outposts in the central US and Canada, and wasn’t on the ice for Tuesday morning’s skate at Warrior ice Arena.

poor bastard pic.twitter.com/fzyWNwMWwu

— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) March 17, 2023

“We do not expect [Derek Forbort] before the end of the regular season,” said Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. “No surgery.”

Forbort, of course, missed a month earlier in the season with a broken thumb also courtesy of a blocked shot that sent Boston’s penalty kill into a pretty hard tailspin without him. That didn’t happen in the two most recent games where he was out of the lineup due to injury, but that is most definitely something to watch moving forward.

The Forbort injury is the exact kind of reason behind the B’s fortifying their defensive depth with the deal for Dmitry Orlov ahead of the NHL trade deadline as attrition eats away at their back end depth.

The 31-year-old Forbort has five goals and 12 points in 54 games this season along with a plus-12 rating as a steady bottom pairing defenseman and has been Boston’s best penalty killer and shot blocker all year.

Montgomery said that Jakub Zboril and AJ Greer would be the healthy scratches and out of the lineup on Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators. The good news on the health front is that Nick Foligno and Taylor Hall both skated on the Warrior ice prior to Boston’s practice on Tuesday morning and continue to begin checking boxes in their return trajectory from lower body injuries that have sidelined them for the remainder of the regular season.