Mike Komisarek got waived yesterday. It’s about time. Hopefully somebody takes him. But it doesn’t really matter as the Leafs can afford to pay him in the AHL anyway.

$4.5 million per year for:

• 2009-10: 34 games played: 0G, 4A for 4P, -9, 19:56 ATOI; 4th on the depth chart when healthy
• 2010-11: 75 games played: 1G, 9A for 10P, -8, 13:38 ATOI; literally 7th on the depth chart, but played nearly a full season due to injuries to other defencemen
• 2011-12: 45 games played: 1G, 4A for 5P, -13, 16:39 ATOI; 5th on the depth chart when he played
• 2012-13: 4 games played: 0P, +2, 15:21 ATOI; clearly a reserve as he played 61 total minutes this season.

Now obviously I would have loved for someone to have traded us a late-round pick for this guy, but how do you trade that?

Was this the worst signing of Burke’s tenure?

I know that sounds like a rhetorical question but I’m not entirely sure as Colby Armstrong’s contract was also large for the time (and his skill level) and he sure didn’t play a lot.

But, I think, we have to view this as the worst free agency mistake Burke made. Moreover, it is an indictment of his inability to see the changing landscape of the league. (I should note that I was not immune from this view, thinking Burke’s trade of Luke Schenn for JVR to have been a mistake, when it was a giant win.) Whether or not Komisarek was overrated because he played with Andrei Markov, he was clearly not mobile enough to play major minutes in the league as it transitioned to a faster pace. The injury problems didn’t help either.

Obviously Burke could not have foreseen the injury problems with Komisarek; Komisarek had been relatively healthy for the Habs. (He wasn’t the picture of health like some players, but he wasn’t a walking infirmary like Lupul or Connolly, either.) But the reason GMs get paid lots of money is to plan for their team and Burke clearly did not have any idea that Komisarek’s mobility issues would become a problem in the future (if they weren’t yet a problem on Montreal). And that ended up making Komisarek’s contract one of the worst in the league at the time.