I like Blues players to have a ton of integrity and grit. Those are the kinds of players I prefer, because it reminds me of when I walked by myself across America with a backpack and a tent and a journal for the better part two years, including listening to the Blues Wings series on shortwave radio in 1996. That's why the opening chapter canon business school book Good to Great about companies uses the example of a person planning a long 20 mile/day walk over a vast distance. The author is hoping people who read the book will decide to have the kind of personal integrity and intellectual honesty required to be great in life and in business. I recommend the book!
Like others, I enjoy sports when I can relate to players as people. I love to give my honest opinions about the Blues, and I take pride in my accountability and always always have. Always. But of course that takes integrity and having a deep sense of oneself. I think it's the winning formula for players in a hockey team. It's what people like Dvorsky have, the relentless willingness to improve.
It's tough in hockey when refs are blatantly targeting you, and you can tell that the ref has no integrity, like a ref who gambles. There's only one thing you can do in a situation like that. You remind yourself that you care about integrity and that you have a higher standard. I mean a guy like the recently acquired Ryan Suter, he doesn't have it. Why bring that in on purpose? I mean, yes, places do that all the time, they bring in cancers and actively encourage a total lack of integrity among your group. But what kind of decision is that?
I brought up the relationship to observing sports and the qualities that athletes have because they're right on point. I hope the example of some of the things I've been able to do will encourage others to make intellectual honesty a bedrock. For example, I attribute my honesty to see the Petro decision clearly for what it was in real time. You can't be an unreliable narrator and see that situation squarely. I suspect that those who truly lack honesty, project it onto others, probably the embarrassment of having been so consequentially wrong about the single most important Blues decision combined with never having owned up to it. (But that's just informed observation of people over time talking.)
Incidentally it's why I don't like Jordan Kyrou. I disdain people with talent who do not work to maximize it. I believe that the people who do will defeat the people who don't, and I don't want the Blues to be defeated.
I find that the subject of integrity, and even more, the subject of self-awareness, is very important when discussing players and management, as well as deals and contracts, in a format such as this. There is a matrix that you can envision, with four distinct quadrants, that one can use as a guide as to whether the discussion in which they are engaged meets the desired levels of integrity and self-awareness.
In Quadrant 1, both parties are in agreement about the subject and are discussing the matter with honesty and integrity, fully self-aware of when they are truly discussing facts and when they are merely discussing opinions.
In Quadrant 2, the parties disagree, but they do so in a way that is respectful, making their arguments with honesty and integrity, and adhering diligently to the precepts in Quadrant 1 regarding distinguishing facts from opinions. Both parties feel heard and respected, and often opinions are swayed by the quality of the argument.
In Quadrant 3, we see two parties in disagreement, but while one party is in full possession of the differences between facts and opinions, the other party confuses the two concepts, often resorting to doing so with the full knowledge and intent of doing so. It is here that we see the honesty and integrity so paramount to civil discussion start to erode.
In Quadrant 4, we see two parties in agreement, but while one party is in full possession of the differences between facts and opinions and makes sound and rational arguments, the other party confuses the concepts of facts and opinion, and decides to create controversy where there is none, simply for the attention they desperately seek. Some might refer to this as a form of shitposting.
The Petro discussion that you so astutely referred to, is a great case study in this matrix. It seems so many who are eager to discuss the topic are misguided in their interpretation that they are in possession of the full facts, arguing their opinion of
"what certainly must have occurred" as if it were fact. While I leave open the possibility that Alex Pietrangelo, Donald Meehan, and Doug Armstrong may very well be active members of this humble online community, I think it is dangerous for anyone
not in that group of three to assume that they are in possession of all of the facts surrounding the contract negotiations and subsequent departure of the player, so any arguments presented in absolutes, should anyone dare make them, would not be entirely within the definition of "intellectual honesty". I feel it is one's responsibility to always be careful to make clear when one is arguing an opinion versus arguing over the existence of facts. I guess one couldn't really be blamed if they felt that someone that they were engaged with in a discussion such as this were insistent that their opinion was fact. It could lead one to believe that their argument, though not necessarily the individual in question, lacked the prerequisite "intellectual honesty" as to be classified as an honest discussion. I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles to have an honest discussion about players and management or contracts and trades.
