Dating back to last season, the Senators have reportedly demonstrated significant interest in acquiring Chris Stewart.
TSN’s Bob McKenzie chronicled some of those rumours last February when he outlined a prospective three-way trade involving the Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues and Ottawa Senators.
Although this fabled three-way trade never came to fruition, the Sabres and Blues were able to reach an agreement on a deal that sent Jaroslav Halak, Chris Stewart, prospect William Carrier, a first round pick and a conditional draft pick to the Sabres for Ryan Miller and Steve Ott.
Since that time, Buffalo’s always been considered as a placeholder organization for Stewart. The right winger is in the last year of his two-year contract that will pay him $4.2 million in real dollars ($4.15M cap hit) this season. With a birthday on October 30th, the soon-to-be 28-year old will hit unrestricted free agency this July.
Bruce Garrioch reported back in September that the Senators would still like to add a top nine forward to their ranks, so given Ottawa’s interest last season, the familial relationship between Tim Murray and Bryan Murray and Bryan Murray’s lust for a top six forward who can play with an edge, these Chris Stewart to Ottawa trade discussions just won’t go away.
And according to Pierre Lebrun’s latest rumblings blog for ESPN, the Senators had conversations with the Sabres had conversations about Stewart earlier this month.
“It’s not a matter of if, but rather when, the Buffalo Sabres flip pending UFA Chris Stewart.
There’s nothing imminent as far as we can tell. We reported earlier that the Boston Bruins have him as one of their targets, and another Atlantic Division team, the Ottawa Senators, had talks earlier this month with the Sabres. The Senators tried to acquire him before the trade deadline last spring. They spoke again to Buffalo a few weeks back but nothing came of it.”
Thank hell nothing came of it.
There are worse players in hockey than Chris Stewart and the two seasons in which he tallied 28 goals weren’t that long ago. Hell, that kind of production was the principle reason why the St. Louis Blues wanted him as the centrepiece of their trade return that sent Erik Johnson to the Avalanche for Stewart and Kevin Shattenkirk.
Stewart also has the kinds of physical tools — size, physicality and a quick release — that GMs salivate over and tend to overrate. If Ottawa acquired him, they wouldn’t the first team to believe that they could take a once heralded player and think that a fresh start or opportunity here could be just the tonic to jump start Stewart’s career, but Chris Stewart is a mediocre puck possession player.
To be a valuable player at the NHL level, Chris Stewart has to be a productive player because he just doesn’t do enough of the small things to make him worthwhile when he isn’t getting his name on the score sheet.
Stewart’s always been a mediocre puck possession player, even when he was receiving favourable zone starts on an exceptionally good possession team in St. Louis.
Unless the Senators were able to acquire Stewart by offloading an unwanted contract like the one to Colin Greening — a proposal that the Senators would assuredly have to augment with a prospect or draft pick to entice the rebuilding Sabres — Stewart simply isn’t a good fit who can help the Senators improve in areas where they need it – especially when the organization already has top six right wingers in Bobby Ryan and Alex Chiasson who put up offensive numbers but also struggle in the possession game.
It would be one thing if the Senators were a great puck possession team that was in need of some goal scoring and could afford to carry Stewart as somewhat of a goal scoring luxury, but through nine games, the Senators have posted the second worst close Fenwick percentage (41.76%) in the NHL while averaging the second highest number of shots allowed per game (36.6).
The Senators simply aren’t good enough to give up the kind of tangible assets that would be required to bring Stewart into the fold (especially when those assets could be used in a separate move to improve a greater area of need), especially when the ice time that Stewart would receive could be better spent developing one of the team’s young forwards who should actually have a future with this organization.
Other News and Notes:
OFFICIAL RELEASE: The Raiders relieve Cory Clouston as Head Coach http://t.co/ZNEV9Xw5f6
— PrinceAlbert Raiders (@PARaidersHockey) October 31, 2014
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– Cory Clouston was fired? I didn’t even realize that he was still coaching such a high level program.
– Robin Lehner was back on the ice today following the birth of his first child yesterday – which means that Andrew Hammond, Ottawa’s maternity leave goaltender, was returned to Binghamton.
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