Last night Peter Chiarelli was in Buffalo and the rumor is that he was once again scouting Chris Stewart. There’s been rumors floated before that the Bruins were interested in Stewart and if there’s a fire sale in Buffalo as Tanksgiving continues then the Bruins would be in on him.
Chris Stewart is, at best, a poor man’s Milan Lucic. I’m sure a lot of people love the idea of Chris Stewart. A big guy who is pretty tough and can get you around 15 goals a year, 20 if he has a horseshoe jammed up his cinnamon ring. Every GM fantasizes about a guy like Chris Stewart but so few of them actually pan out.
Lets look at some raw data from this season. In 25 games for the Sabres, Chris Stewart has 3 goals and 1 assist on 55 shots. For those playing at home, his shooting percentage equates to about 5.5% on the season. If we were to implement Stewart’s current numbers on the Bruins, he would be sitting 18th on the Bruins in terms of shooting percentage between Chris Kelly and Joe Morrow.
I know it is unfair to put Stewart’s current stats from a piss poor Buffalo team in with a Bruins team that is somewhat offensively proficient so look at it this way. There’s a stat called points/60 that can give you a good understanding of what a player will do for 60 minutes. Stewart currently ranks 201st (out of 268) among players in the NHL who have played at least 300 minutes. The only eligible Bruin who is under Stewart is Torey Krug, a defenseman.
Here’s what really chaps my ass. When you hear people talk about Chris Stewart they will tell you that he is a 20 goal scorer. What they don’t tell you is that Stewart did it twice and it was in 2009 and 2010 with the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues. After the 2010-2011 campaign, Stewart’s goal totals have been 15, 18, 15 and 3 (this season). So while he has scored 20 goals in the past, there’s no real consistency with it.
Stewart suffers from the Loui Eriksson/Milan Lucic stigma of being a 30 goal scorer. When Eriksson was traded everyone raved because he scored 30 goals once in Dallas but failed to mention that his goal totals dipped since then. The same happens with Milan Lucic. When people talk about Milan Lucic, they mention “30 goal scorer Milan Lucic” but fail to mention he did it once and it was a few years ago.
In a system where everyone openly accepts that a player’s scoring will regress because the team is worried about defensively responibilities, why would the Bruins take a chance on a guy who may hit 20 goals? He doesn’t necessarily fill a need for Boston outside of filling the “tough power forward” void left in Peter’s heart when Nathan Horton Jarome Iginla left.
I believe that this is the perfect time for the Bruins to make a change in philosophy. David Krejci and Milan Lucic don’t need another power forward to man the “first” line. It has been shown that Lucic is quite effective with a play making center (Soderberg) and a two-way forward (Eriksson). You don’t need another chest thumping, Dean Portman to Lucic’s Fulton Reed power forward.
It would be a mistake for Chiarelli to trade for Chris Stewart. At this point he doesn’t fit the Bruins need of a legit top 6 scoring forward. Would Stewart be a better fit on the third line? Possibly, but then Chris Kelly doesn’t have a home and a team without Chris Kelly is a team Claude Julien will never coach again.
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