Brian Glennie said:
I'm astonished that so many people, and Nik am I ever surprised to see you among them, advise that we ought continue to give this clown the benefit of the doubt.
It has nothing to do with giving anyone the benefit of the doubt and everything to do with what I think was the correct thing to do given the realities of his job.
Regardless of your claims to the contrary, Burke didn't know the season was going to be shut down and didn't, and still doesn't, know what the system is going to look like when hockey comes back. It's fine enough to speculate but until we know what sort of provisions or mechanisms teams will have to get under the cap it doesn't make a lot of sense to pretend that we know the value or impact that the 1 million dollars Colby Armstrong will count for next season.
The way I see it, ignoring the lockout for a moment, Burke had three options with what to do with Armstrong. Buy him out and split up his cap hit over two years, keep him in the hopes that he'd play again or send him to the minors. Assuming that Burke had already decided that the team wanted to move on and make his spot available we're left between the pros and cons of buying him out vs. burying him and I think buying him out made more sense for a few reasons.
First, I think the cap implications are largely irrelevant. The Leafs didn't figure to be a team that spent to the cap this year and don't next year either. That makes the potential cap implications meaningless in my books. Two this year vs. one and one, it doesn't matter if there's cap room regardless. Moreover, the Leafs still have players like Connolly and Lombardi who they can trade/bury if cap space does become a huge concern.
Secondly, I think there is genuine benefit to the team in doing the right thing by Armstrong. The Leafs don't want to be seen as a team who will send players to the AHL if they spy even the slightest hint of benefit in doing so. Armstrong, as evidenced by his contract with Montreal, is still a guy who can get a NHL contract. If I were a lower-tier free agent and the Leafs developed a reputation for burying players who could still contribute just to save a few cap dollars, I'd almost certainly not want to sign with them.
Third, and I know we like to pretend that the Leafs should genuinely not care about money, but the reality is that no matter how profitable a business is a manager is going to have to account for the financial decisions he makes. if the Leafs had no design on having Armstrong on the team and the buyout presented them with the option of paying him one million dollars as opposed to two in the AHL, then it was the prudent and reasonable thing to do to save the organization the extra million. I don't care if the Leafs are earning money like they invented the Ipad, million dollar decisions are still important and Burke has to justify it to the people who employ him.
So was there a benefit to demoting Armstrong? Not really. Is there a benefit to buying him out? I think so. Was it the right thing to do professionally? Almost unquestionably. So in the end it has nothing to do with giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. I'd have done the exact same thing.
So then we get back to the lockout and, again, the simple reality is that Burke didn't know how things would shake out and we still don't. I'm not going to kill him now for conducting his business as if that were the case and there's no reason to until we see the highly unlikely event that the million bucks Armstrong gets over the next two years proves to be the terrible calamity you seem to think it'll be.
