You would think that with the hockey world watching and likely loving the mess that is/was the Maple Leafs, teams would be using John Ferguson Jr.’s model for building a team as the defacto how not to build a team. I mean, when you look at the aptly named Muskoka 6, you would think that only in extreme cases would a GM dole out a no trade clause. One would also think that a seasoned GM would be much smarter then the relatively new ex GM JFJ.
Having said that, did I miss the press release where the New York Rangers hired JFJ? Larry Brooks in his weekly Rangers/NHL article points out that the Rangers have gone against team policy and doled out a couple of them:
“Somehow, $8M over two years wasn’t enough to get Markus Naslund to agree to come to New York, so what did Sather do? The GM gave Naslund, who will be 35 at the end of the month and is coming off two consecutive disappointing seasons in Vancouver, a full no-move clause.
Hello?
It also seems Wade Redden needed a sweetener to take his $39M, seven-year deal. So the GM gave the defenseman the annual right to give management a list of eight teams to which he cannot be traded, and it will just be unfortunate if Atlanta should want him in a deal for Ilya Kovalchuk, won’t it?
Brutal.”
Brooks is bang on. If JFJ taught us on thing it’s that NTC/NMC are the death of a franchise. They should only be given out in extremely rare circumstances. We have seen through the collective bargaining process that the teams and GM’s need protection from themselves, perhaps the number of NT/NM clauses should be collectively bargained down to 1 per team (with current ones obviously grandfathered.)
So here we are in July 2008 and one would think that ordering merchandise over the internet would be pretty easy. I know here in Canada things are a tad more difficult then in the US of A, but still…… I have to share my two most recent shopping examples. We are moving offices at work and I had to purchase some furniture and a couple of pieces of electronics. Should be simple enough to order from two national retailers, IKEA (sweedish for common sense!) and Future Shop/Best Buy right? No such luck.
The IKEA story. I went to the IKEA website and suffered through the impossible task of actually putting together an order. Imagine my reaction when the nifty computer said I have completed my order without paying for my items. A tiny little note on my receipt informed me that they do not accept payment for internet orders that someone would be calling me within 48 hours to complete my transaction. How bizarre i thought…. Of course 48 hours passed and no call came. So I called the 888 number provided on my receipt and the story got worse. I was told I could pay for my order (how nice!) but, shipment would take 6-8 weeks. When I asked how that was possible, I was told that all shipments come from the Quebec office! When I asked if they could trasnfer the order to one of their several stores in the GTA, I was told simply “no”. So in the end I had to endure a morning at IKEA and do everything on site.
The footnote to the story was that same day delivery cost $55 but next day delivery was $65. When I told them I wanted same day delivery they told me that the delivery would come between 4 and 10pm! What a great shopping experience…Thanks IKEA.
Now my friends at Future Shop/Bestbuy. Same story, I wanted to buy a TV online and have it delivered. This time I called the store. Confirmed that I can’t do what I want to online but that I could do so online. I went to the store, picked out the TV and then was told that they can’t deliver the TV I wanted because the central warehouse is sold out of the model I want!
Amazing stuff from 2 relatively large Canadian retailers…. Its time for e-commerce to really get easy. We have a long way to go.