Friends, Blues Fans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. I have an apology to make.
For years, you've known me as the guy who's been a fierce critic of Doug Armstrong. I've been a longstanding proponent of the idea that Armstrong's work was terrible, his genius was overrated, his success was vastly more due to luck than talent, that he was a prime example of the Peter Principle and that there was no limit to his ability to fail upwards despite all the terrible decisions he made.
I have long argued - nay, begged, pleaded, wished upon a star, made burnt offering upon an improvised altar for divine intervention - that the day would come where the eyes of Blues ownership would finally be opened and they would recognize that everything great that Doug Armstrong did was really a mirage, a shell game, a grand fabrication where purely dumb luck from a series of highly improbable events came together to create a 5-month run of grand success that we've enjoyed ever since, and that it had nothing to do with anything he did or responsible for.
I'm sad to say that today, March 8, 2024, I have learned that I was wrong. Doug Armstrong really does know more than everyone else. He really is a genius. Everything good that has happened is because of him and what he's built, and we all should recognize that and give him the full accolades that he richly deserves.
He ... has an actuary table.
And it's not just an ordinary actuary table. This table has ... special powers, like saying when guys are going to play their 11th game, or 50th game, or whatever.
And I'm sure Doug was severely downplaying what this actuary table does, because as an actuary who's seen an actuary table, uses an actuary table, I know what an actuary table can do and what it can't do. And if this actuary table tells what he says it can, on top of what an actuary table does, ... well, now I realize what an absolute genius Doug Armstrong really is. He has not only tapped the power of an actuary table, he's enhanced it in ways that are truly unimaginable.
I'm certain, without a doubt, that this actuary table is what has allowed Doug to make the decisions that he has, that have worked the ways they have. It's what foreshadowed what Doug must do from his earliest days in the organization through the years where we struggled to advance in the playoffs. That was not bad luck, or poor strategic planning. The actuary table made clear: those things must happen. It made clear our path for success in 2016, our near-success in 2017, and our late-season failure in 2018. All was necessary to make the moves Doug made in 2018 and 2019 that brought us the Cup.
The rest of us couldn't understand some of the decisions that happened. The novice would see a bunch of moves in the offseason but the same lousy head coach and think "there is no way this is ever going to work." We would see early-season struggles and think failure; Doug's actuary table gave him the assurance not just to go into the season like that, but to not call up Binnington, wait some 7 weeks to bring in Berube, wait another 4 weeks to call up Binnington, then have Berube wait another 2 weeks to finally play Berube. No ordinary mortal would have known that confluence of events would have worked so perfectly to result in a Cup; only an actuary table could have told him that, and only someone who knew how to read an actuary table would have interpreted that and known exactly what to do and when to do it.
Everything else since? I know, it looks weird. It looks confusing. It looks like it's a mess, almost like a complete clusterf***. Not signing guys. Signing other guys. Not making trades. Making other trades. Do not fear, friends. It is the actuary table that has dictated what must happen, is leading us to future glory, and in Doug's trusted hands and with his ability to read the table like no other person can, it will most assuredly bring us back to great success once again.
So if it's not too much trouble, and if there are no objections, I'd like to switch my vote from "yes" to "no." Now knowing that Doug Armstrong has an actuary table, and knowing the great predictive power that an actuary table has, I realize that he truly is a great general manager, far greater than any of us really realize, and as long as he has that actuary table there is no way his plan - a plan which we cannot know, for we don't have that actuary table to be able to interpret its mystic runes - will ever fail.
