Adious Stewart. Please.
I cannot fathom the love-in for this guy. He was non-existent for the first 41 games (other than when endeavoring to establish himself as the give-away king of the team) but finally has a swell offensive stretch and he's a keeper?
Anyone notice that he's only had this swell offensive stretch since being gift-wrapped every opportunity possible to showcase his offense and that during this same stretch everyone from mgmt down has been ignoring the big white elephant (aka: Stewart's wholesale inability to contribute positively to the bottom line). Presumably with the hope other teams don't realize that he's useless if not given 1st line/unit minutes and magically protected from having ANY defensive responsibility.
Seriously 11pts in 41 games. Then the next stretch, averaging 17:43, he balloons up to 22 pts so that he's now -30 on 22pts. That is NEGATIVE 30 on a measly 22pts. Take away his 9 pp points and he's got 13 points to show for 52 games. Heck, let him keep the 9 pp points and I still gotta wonder how any team rationalizes that he is useful to the bottom line.
It's not all in the +/- of course and it's easy enough for a guy to rack up the negatives playing a stretch of bad games or when lined up with a combo that doesn't fit well. I mean, maybe it's not all Stewart right?
But it is. In every stat I can find.
Give-Away King leads all forwards by with 26 (2nd place dubious honors goes to Moulson at 15).
He's -49 on his career, including 3 seasons he was negative double digits (-10, -18 and now -30) and the best he's ever been was +4 on 64 points. WOW. a 64pt guy ends up only +4? Hmmm...
Most recently we've seen the Stewart affect with his move from being routinely lined up with Hodgson to being routinely lined up with Ennis/Girgensens. During this showcasing stretch Hodgson's +/- has stabilized, while poor Ennis & Girgensens... Poor Ennis, poor Girgensens.
Okay, I get that Stewart is fun to watch when he's on his game and I get it that it's great to see some goal scoring (I was actually advocating the Moulson/Stewart swap a few days before it happened), but there comes a point when the points are meaningless if the other team is persistently getting more.
So, get rid of him. Word on the street is that he's not exactly known for being consistently on his game, and according to what we've seen this year (and backed up by his historical results), apparently Stewart being consistently productive equates to Stewart costing his team even more points against.
Get rid of him, please. Besides, if Kane is anything alike the worst of his personality being yakked about, we don't need to have a Stewart around too.