Bruins sign Derek Forbort (3 x $3M)

cshea

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Same contract as Reilly, 3x$3million.

Guess this is how they shored up LHD. Don't really think they solved the problem, but we'll see.
 

TheRealness

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Essentially just an older, bigger, but less mobile Lauzon. Suspect he gets PK minutes, and does a lot of D-Zone faceoffs and fills Lauzon's minutes for the most part on the 3rd pair.

$3m seems like kind of a lot for him, but it won't hamstring them much.

Have to wonder if Zboril ends up beating him out how this will look in the last two years as well.
 

cshea

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It's not great, but it's the corner they've been backed into. It is really hard to find good defenseman on the cheap. At some point, you just kind of have to accept you're going to have to overpay and get it over with. To he honest, I'd rather the Suter deal than this.

$14 million left for Krejci, goalie and any other additions. Plenty of money for impact additions but the player pool is drying up.
 

burstnbloom

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He's not any good. I would have preferred Zboril or Urho trying to figure it out over a bad player getting paid $3m. I wish Steve Yzerman was the Bruins GM.
 

PedroSpecialK

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I'd have given Suter 3 years $5.5m AAV, or given up a 3rd for Schmidt, 100 times before making this deal. The need was another top-4 D and they whiffed IMO.
 

baggy5

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Thought they were in GFIN mode. I'm thankful Coleman isn't coming here on a 6-year deal but this Forbort signing is uninspiring. I hope they're planning to add more to that defense.
 

Maximus

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He's not any good. I would have preferred Zboril or Urho trying to figure it out over a bad player getting paid $3m. I wish Steve Yzerman was the Bruins GM.
I'd rather have Zboril or Urho trying to figure it out too than paying $3M/year for a 3rd D pair JAG.
 

Salem's Lot

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I'd have given Suter 3 years $5.5m AAV, or given up a 3rd for Schmidt, 100 times before making this deal. The need was another top-4 D and they whiffed IMO.
They’re making the mistake of valuing size over whether the guy can actually play or not. I would have given Suter 3 x $6 before making this deal. They’re just spinning their wheels right now.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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Looking once again like we’re in good position to have a very good regular season and pray for perfect health and everything to go right in the spring.

At the very least I guess there may be flexibility to make moves in-season as needed. Running it back only made sense to me if you were adding a splash to it—real top 4 D, real top 6 FW, not just some guy.
 

Scoops Bolling

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I'd have given Suter 3 years $5.5m AAV, or given up a 3rd for Schmidt, 100 times before making this deal. The need was another top-4 D and they whiffed IMO.
The need was a 3rd pairing D who could add size and physicality to a blue line corps badly lacking that, and who could take the defensive zone starts and PK minutes left by Lauzon. That's pretty much exactly what they've got in Forbort. He blocks a lot of shots, uses his body, and can log a lot of defensive zone starts. It's maybe $0.5 to $1M more than he's worth, but that's FA. He's not a world beater but he fit the roster need and as with Reilly they're getting him through what should be his peak. Anyone complaining about the deal should just look at the Poolman, Ceci, Barrie, etc., contracts...this is what 3rd pairing defensemen that you can maybe play in the Top 4 are getting.
 

veritas

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I think this is a big overpay, but they needed a defensive minded LHD who could kill penalties and they got one. They're better than they were before.

Suter isn't very good on the PK, neither is Reilly. Grz is actually pretty effective, but I don't think you want to count on him taking a ton of PK minutes.

They probably think he can play with McAvoy as Grz insurance too, he played with Doughty in LA who is a similar style player.
 

Jordu

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Essentially just an older, bigger, but less mobile Lauzon. Suspect he gets PK minutes, and does a lot of D-Zone faceoffs and fills Lauzon's minutes for the most part on the 3rd pair.

$3m seems like kind of a lot for him, but it won't hamstring them much.

Have to wonder if Zboril ends up beating him out how this will look in the last two years as well.
I agree with this. The Bruins need size and experience on the back line, so adding an “older, bigger but less mobile” version of Lauzon at 3/$3AAV fills an important need at reasonable cost.

The top AHL D men — Zboril, Vak — are plenty mobile, as are McAvoy, Gryz, Reilly and Clifton.
 

veritas

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Looking once again like we’re in good position to have a very good regular season and pray for perfect health and everything to go right in the spring.
That's what every team does. You have to be good and lucky to win a cup. Vegas has them as the 4th most likely team to win in 2022 at 12/1. Colorado is 1st at 6/1. I don't think there were reasonable moves to be made this offseason that would have closed that gap too much.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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All of the above is fair but I would personally rather splurge, use the $6 mil on Forbort and Reilly toward a legit top pairing defenseman, and fill in the holes with young guys rather than fill the holes with more expensive average players while half of the top pair is merely decent (and gets pushed around come playoff time).

Edit: If there were no such moves to be had, that's fine, and I'm happy to be rooting for a competitive team once again, but if ever there was a time for a splash it would be for whatever remaining years of Bergy/Marchand excellence that we have left.

And I freely admit that we are surprise improvement from a couple players/another Hall-type addition/Coyle getting unstuck away from a lot of these issues taking care of themselves naturally.
 

PedroSpecialK

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The need was a 3rd pairing D who could add size and physicality to a blue line corps badly lacking that, and who could take the defensive zone starts and PK minutes left by Lauzon. That's pretty much exactly what they've got in Forbort. He blocks a lot of shots, uses his body, and can log a lot of defensive zone starts. It's maybe $0.5 to $1M more than he's worth, but that's FA. He's not a world beater but he fit the roster need and as with Reilly they're getting him through what should be his peak. Anyone complaining about the deal should just look at the Poolman, Ceci, Barrie, etc., contracts...this is what 3rd pairing defensemen that you can maybe play in the Top 4 are getting.
I should restate - I don't think a bottom-pairing D with size was the only need; I would have preferred a better all-around top-4 defenseman given how injury-prone Grzelcyk was this past season. I don't disagree that they also needed a 6th-7th d-man who could be a PK specialist, but that's not someone you want to pay $3m/year for, and I think Forbort is better than that designation.

In the lens of a 3rd pairing LHD being the need, you can definitely do worse than Forbort, and in a world where Nemeth gets 3 years $2.5m, I'll take Forbort any day. I am just left wishing there was more ambition in terms of the quality of defender they wanted to add in free agency. To me, this:

Grzelcyk - McAvoy
Suter - Clifton
Reilly - Carlo
Zboril

with an eye towards upgrading Clifton at the deadline with a rental - is a better corps IMO than:

Grzelcyk - McAvoy
Reilly - Carlo
Forbort - Clifton
Zboril
 

kenneycb

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All of the above is fair but I would personally rather splurge, use the $6 mil on Forbort and Reilly toward a legit top pairing defenseman, and fill in the holes with young guys rather than fill the holes with more expensive average players while half of the top pair is merely decent (and gets pushed around come playoff time).

Edit: If there were no such moves to be had, that's fine, and I'm happy to be rooting for a competitive team once again, but if ever there was a time for a splash it would be for whatever remaining years of Bergy/Marchand excellence that we have left.

And I freely admit that we are surprise improvement from a couple players/another Hall-type addition/Coyle getting unstuck away from a lot of these issues taking care of themselves naturally.
Who do you make a splash for? The UFA market sucks this year and I doubt Dougie Hamilton is walking through that door.
 

Scoops Bolling

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Grzelcyk - McAvoy
Suter - Clifton
Reilly - Carlo
Zboril

with an eye towards upgrading Clifton at the deadline with a rental - is a better corps IMO than:

Grzelcyk - McAvoy
Reilly - Carlo
Forbort - Clifton
Zboril
I think the first group is a better collection of names, but I don't think it's actually a better defense corps. Suter is going to be 37, he's basically given up any pretence of playing a physical game the last two seasons, and he's a guy who is going to demand offensive zone starts when that's what their existing LD are best suited for. I think that defense corp is going to get overpowered in the playoffs because outside of McAvoy, there's just not a lot of physicality in that group, and as a whole it's really skewed towards offense over defense. The team has plenty of mobile, puck moving guys, what they needed was size, physicality, and more defensive zone prowess. If you add Suter, I think you pretty much have to move on from Clifton because there's no other apparent way to fix those weaknesses in that unit.
 

Jed Zeppelin

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Granting that:
A) free agency is a crappy way to build a team and
B) the Bruins have generally not had much wiggle room to go big or much need to fill in with free agents

I think I am mostly disgruntled with free agency in a general sense. Outside of goalies, what was the last external FA signing that was actually a success for this team? Smith looks like a modest hit, but before that? Michael Ryder? Iginla? It's not a backbreaker because we've been good to very good on trades and retaining players. I think I'd just like to see, for example, some under-the-radar signings where the guy unexpectedly plays up because he's a great fit, or something along those lines. The record has been so bad on so many of these signings that I basically just end up hoping they at least earn their money for half the contract.