When it was announced that Chris Stewart had signed a two-year contract with the Minnesota Wild prior to this season, a collective sigh could be heard across the State of Hockey. This would be Stewart’s second stint with the club, after he spent a portion of the ’14-’15 season in Minnesota, thanks to a trade deadline deal that year that brought him from Buffalo to inject some size and physicality into the lineup.
The big forward saw limited success in that first visit, as he earned three goals and eight assists in 20 regular-season contests, but he then went almost silent in the 2015 playoffs, registering just two assists through two series and really coming up short in terms of being the imposing physical force that Chuck Fletcher thought he was bringing in.