So I thought I'd address this.
Derek Forbort and Michael Stone are very different players.
Here is some Zone Entry Denial / Controlled Zone Exit data from 2018:
What does this chart really mean?
In the sample, opposing teams were carrying the puck in 72.5% of the time on Michael Stone (who played on CGY's 3rd pair with Brett Kulak that year.)
In the same sample, opposing teams were carrying the puck in 63.8% of the time on Stone's partner, Brett Kulak. As anyone who could look past contracts and NHL experience could observe, Stone was the anchor on his D pairing.
Easy zone entries lead to chances against.
In the same sample, opposing teams were carrying the puck in 56.4% of the time on Drew Doughty. I mean that's classic Doughty - there's a reason he's got two Stanley Cups. And he was doing it against top NHLers as he plays a Giordano/Brodie type role for his team. His partner was... Derek Forbort.
Opposing teams were carrying the puck in 64.9% of the time on Forbort. This is comparable to Kulak and Brodie (and that was a down year for Brodie you may recall, I imagine his numbers are better the last couple of years with more confidence). Again, Forbort was playing on L.A.'s top pair, whereas Stone was playing on Calgary's third pair that year. So the expectation would have been that star players would get more controlled entries, but Forbort was forcing more dump-ins along with his partner Doughty. This is textbook neutral zone hockey that pairing was playing. Yeah, no one is going to confuse Derek Forbort for Scott Stevens and he doesn't have much offensive zone skill, but he is a player who can help shut the neutral zone down. In my opinion if you control the neutral zone, your skilled players (Gaudreau etc) have way more opportunity to create offense, both on the counterattack and simply being more confident to make plays knowing their mistakes will be covered.
Now let's look at the other part of the chart, controlled exits.
Mike Stone had a controlled exit% of 27.8% - he was a glass and out Dman in every sense
His partner Kulak had a controlled exit% of 49.0% - there was a reason some of us felt Kulak was "carrying" the third defense pair that year. If you can make controlled exits out of your zone, on paper you should have more puck possession and probably more transition scoring. It didn't quite manifest under Gulutzan's molasses systems but it I'm digressing right now.
Doughty had a controlled exit% of 56.0% - I mean we're talking about a former Norris Trophy winner in the prime of his career so it's unsurprising. And yet again, Doughty is playing against far more dangerous forwards than Kulak-Stone.
And finally that brings us to Derek Forbort. His controlled exit% of 39.5% looks pedestrian compared to Doughty - but that's to be expected. It's still an impressive number, and that's why you see Forbort in the top right corner of the chart above.
Does any of this translate to the stuff we value - goals and goals against? Well L.A.'s an awful offensive team and probably could have benefited from a more offensive partner for Doughty along the lines of Giordano, so it's safe to say Forbort was playing too high up the lineup from the perspective of offense. From the perspective of defense though? I think so. I think Forbort's 2.02 5v5 GA/60 from 2016-19 has some value. That ranks 12th best of the 176 defensemen who logged 2000 minutes over that span. Of course he's been a beneficiary of playing with Kopitar and Doughty - that goes without saying. But I don't believe personally that Mike Stone is capable of achieving this. Or for that matter, the Travis Hamonic that we've seen for most of his time here.
Forbort is the player people THINK Hamonic is. And while I personally still prefer not to have a no-offense player in the top four when healthy, I'm a lot more comfortable with him filling in for Giordano than Michael freakin' Stone. At a cost of a fourth round pick, it's tough to criticize this acquisition. We didn't pay a 12th overall plus two second for him.
