Buffalo Sabres forward Chris Stewart is under contract for one more season with a cap hit of $4.15 million, and while he's preparing to help the team in its rebuild after being limited to five games due to injury after being acquired from the St. Louis Blues prior to the trade deadline, he understands he may be the property of another team come training camp.
“I don’t think it’s going to take that long to turn it around here," Stewart said, as per the Sabres' official website. "Obviously you’re subject to all those trade rumors and all the stuff like that, but that’s out of my control,” Stewart said. “Like I’ve said before, as long as I’m a Buffalo Sabre, I’m just going to worry about helping this team win hockey games and that’s all that’s on my mind.”
Stewart, 26, scored 15 goals in 58 games for the Blues prior to the trade, and suffered an ankle injury in his second game with the Sabres that effectively ended his season. As such, his eyes are on a rebound in 2014-15, whether in Buffalo or elsewhere.
“It’s about getting healthy now and having a good offseason and coming back strong next year,” he said. “It sucks. You go from the Olympic break to your year being over. You obviously want to play this game. I tried to push it to come back and I was feeling good for a couple weeks. It sucks that I ended the way on the way it did, but that’s in the past now and all we can do now is worry about the future.”
Stewart scored a career-high 28 goals in 77 games with the Colorado Avalanche in 2009-10, and could certainly help a team with higher aspirations than the Sabres next season.
