On July 1st 2010 Brian Burke and Co flexed their proverbial management muscles and inked versatile grinder Colby Armstrong to a blah blah blah blah blah.  Great, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the point.

As most of you know I try to keep my articles on the shorter side, just because well, reading a lot can get…boring.  Uh, anyways, that means I’m gonna try and keep this article short and get my point across in a number of brief paragraphs, so again, let’s get on with the show.

When Colby Armstrong initially signed with us I was disappointed for a number of reasons: whether it was the fact that we were paying a guy who had just tallied up 29 points three million dollars, whether it was the fact that we were giving him that money for three years, whether it was the fact that he’s a right-winger or whether it was the fact our cap space was slowly diminishing,  it really doesn’t matter.  None of the reasons I hated the Colby Armstrong signing matter anymore, because guess what: I don’t hate it anymore.

Okay, that last part wasn’t completely true.  Just because I think Colby has a place on this team now, and just because I think he will be a significant contributor to the team in more ways that one, doesn’t mean there aren’t some things still noticably wrong with bringing him on board.  But we’ll get to that later, first onto what I like:

Colby Armstrong will be worth the three million dollars we’re giving him.  What Colby will do is, for the most part, play against the other teams top lines and work like all hell to shut them off and wear them down.  In short, there are a lot of things that give me confidence that he can do that: whether it’s the fact that he was tied for 20th in the league in take-aways with 61 (by the way, Kris Versteeg is accountable to the exact same honor), the fact that he isn’t afraid to block shots, the fact that he produces at about a hit per game, or maybe the fact that he was a +6 last year on a below average Atlanta Thrashers team (think of this in the same way that Ponikarovsky was always + on the Leafs, or the fact that Carl Gunnarsson was a mind-boggling +10 last season), there seem to be a number of indictations that he will get good money doing a dirty job.  Essentially what I’m getting at is that if Colby Armstrong can do an above average job keeping the opposition’s best players from scoring, if he can be enough of a pest, if he can be enough of a leader (as he was an alternate captain in Atlanta), and he can perhaps set up a bit of an office in front of the net, Colby Armstrong’s versatile box of tools could be well worth just three million dollars.

But then there’s the other side of things.  The side that realizes although what these grinders do is well worth the vast sums of money, they still don’t pay it.  For whatever reason, as valuable as they are, some of the better grinders in the league never seem to make money.  Every once and awhile you’ll see a team desperate for a bottom-six fix that overpays a guy like Armstrong or Malhotra, but more often than not you’ll see classic grinders getting classic grinding money.  Good examples would be Eric Nystrom signing a three-year deal in Minnesota worth 1.4 per season, or even an aging master of the trait like Rob Niedermayer making just 1.150 million for one season in Buffalo next year.

To wrap up this article quickly, what Colby Armstrong does is well worth the money, and for that I’m glad to have him on board.  But again, as good as Colby Armstrong may be, as much as he may be worth that sort of money, the Leafs still should have been able to avoid paying him that much.

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