Chris Stewart won the fight, no doubt about it. And it was one giant loss for the Avalanche.
Stewart’s Nov. 27 fight with Minnesota’s Kyle Brodziak was like Muhammad Ali vs. Chuck Wepner, just a good solid whipping in every respect. And that was just the first half of the fight, when Stewart landed six or seven hard right hands to the head of Brodziak.
For some reason that will long be dressed in regret, Stewart decided to start tossing lefty bombs to Brodziak’s face for good measure. Where was Roberto Duran to jump in and say “No mas” for this fight?
One of those lefts from Stewart resulted in a cracked bone in the hand. When that happened, the reality of consequences hit quick: four to six weeks out of the lineup, surgery to repair the break.
Stewart got the TKO on Brodziak. The Avs got Stewart knocked out of the lineup until January.
Fighting is the über-whipping boy of hockey. The pacifist fans hate it, but the old-schoolers love it and nobody can deny that everybody always looks whenever the gloves fall to the ice and the fists raise. You always want to see the car wreck, so you slow down.
Fighting can “send a message,” and it really can sometimes change a game. But Stewart’s fight was against a clearly inferior opponent, in a game in which the Avs were two goals ahead. There wasn’t much to be gained from a fight in that situation, but there was something to lose.
The loss for the Avs was perhaps the premier power forward in the NHL at the moment, in the midst of an all-star season. Since Stewart went down, the Avs have yet to win a game (0-1-2). To rub things in, it was Stewart’s brother, Anthony, who finished one of the losses with an overtime goal last week for Atlanta. That was supposed to be the first NHL meeting between the two brothers.
If he hasn’t learned it already, Stewart should: He’s much more valuable to the Avs now with his hands, not his fists. The fighting, if it still must be done in this league, must be outsourced to the contractors better qualified for these things. Let Cody McLeod settle any scores. Or David Koci.
Until he comes back, Stewart will have a lot of time to assess what he did.
When he does return, the Avs should greet him with a pair of boxing gloves hanging well up on a wall and a sign saying, “Your fighting days are over.”
