When Chris Stewart’s phone rings at 11 a.m. ET today, he’d better pick it up because Brendan Shanahan would like to talk to him. The Blues forward is getting a talking to thanks to his dangerous shove from behind on Detroit’s Niklas Kronwall last night.
Stewart knocked Kronwall silly with the play and earned a five-minute major for boarding and a game misconduct for the hit. Working in Stewart’s favor for a slap on the wrist is that he has no history of dirty play and no prior suspensions. Working against him is that it’s Shanahan taking care of things and he does things how he sees fit.
With other shove from behind plays like this we’ve seen guys get sat down for a couple games at least regardless of their history of dangerous plays. On the upside for Stewart, the Blues didn’t allow a goal on the Wings’ five-minute power play and beat Detroit 2-1. That might be the one nice thing to say about this whole thing as it seems likely that Stewart is going to get dinged for a few games.
As for Kronwall, he missed the remainder of the first period after the hit but came back to play in the second and finished out the game.