Veteran defenseman Derek Forbort is back on the market in a different way now, landing a professional tryout with the AHL’s Calgary Wranglers, the team announced Thursday afternoon.
Forbort, 34, skated in the first two games of the Vancouver Canucks’ 2025-26 regular season before a lingering hip problem shut him down for the rest of the year. The 6-foot-4 left-shot blue-liner became an unrestricted free agent on July 1, when his one-year contract with Vancouver ran out.
Calgary’s AHL club had a clear opening for added depth on the back end after the Detroit Red Wings claimed Andreas Englund off waivers on Sept. 26. The Wranglers serve as the top minor-league affiliate of the Calgary Flames.
Forbort had already laid out the road to recovery during his end-of-season media availability with Vancouver in April.
“Yeah, kind of started before training camp,” Forbort said. “Started having some hip issues.
Was able to get through training camp with a Cortisone injection that kind of wore off. Ended up doing like a [platelet-rich plasma] injection in Toronto.
Had a pretty bad reaction to that. And then, kind of once that calmed down, we were just trying to rehab.
Tried a bunch of things, and then it just kind of got to the point where I had to get the labral tear in my hip fixed, and so I had surgery for that, and, yeah, just been rehabbing now.”
This isn’t unfamiliar territory for Forbort in Calgary. He previously spent time in the Flames organization during the 2019-20 season after GM Brad Treliving brought him in from the Los Angeles Kings as a trade-deadline rental. The Duluth, Minn. native played seven games for the Flames before the regular season was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, then appeared in 10 playoff games in the 2020 bubble and finished with a goal and an assist.
His pro path has been a long one. The Kings took Forbort in the first round, 15th overall, in the 2010 NHL Draft. After three seasons at the University of North Dakota, he turned pro with Los Angeles in 2013, later winning the Calder Cup with the AHL’s Manchester Monarchs in 2015 before making his NHL debut the next season.
Forbort’s NHL career has taken him from Los Angeles to Calgary, then to Winnipeg for one season and Boston for three more before he signed with Vancouver as a free agent in 2024.
In 552 career NHL games across parts of 11 seasons with the Kings, Flames, Jets, Bruins, and Canucks, Forbort has 19 goals and 106 points. He has also recorded three goals and five points in 35 playoff games.
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