Anexpansion draft, in professionalsports, occurs when a sports league decides to create one or more newexpansion teams orfranchises. This occurs mainly inNorth American sports andclosed leagues. One of the ways of stocking the new team or teams is an expansion draft. Although how each league conducts them varies, and they vary from occasion to occasion, the system is usually something similar to the following:
Each existing team is told it can "protect" a certain number of its existing contracted players by furnishing their names to the league office on or before a certain date. The expansion team(s) then are allowed to select players not on the protected lists in a manner somewhat similar to an entrydraft. There are generally a maximum number of players that can be selected from any one team, at least without the team losing the player receiving something in compensation such as a future entry draft pick.
Teams subject to losing players usually tend to put most if not all of the players they truly need to stay competitive on the protected list. This means that the expansion franchise is often left to choose among players who are old, injury prone, failing to develop as the teams had intended, or perhaps so highly compensated that a team wishes to remove them from the payroll. For this reason, expansion teams are often noncompetitive in their early years in a league,[1] although the advent of thefree agent system has modified this somewhat.Marc-André Fleury, who won threeStanley Cups with thePittsburgh Penguins, is a notable exception of a star player in their prime being left exposed in an expansion draft, being made available for theVegas Golden Knights in the2017 NHL expansion draft after Fleury was made expendable due to the rise ofMatt Murray at goaltender. The rules of the draft can be tweaked by the league to make the expansion team more competitive if that is the business objective of the league's expansion.[2]
Most teams seem to try largely to make a team which will serve until it can begin to develop its own talent, although occasionally players discarded by their old teams benefit from the change in environment and become stars, either again or for the first time.
A similar process occurs when an existing franchise is disbanded and the players contracted to it become available to the remaining teams; this process is referred to as adispersal draft.
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Duringits history, theNFL has held eight expansion drafts in order to accommodate newcoming teams. Half of them took place in 1960s, when the league was expanding quickly, facing the competition fromAFL. The last was held in 2002, as the league reached its current state of 32 teams.
Thefirst NFL expansion draft took place in 1960 to let the just-enfranchisedDallas Cowboys pick their initial players. Because the new franchise approval happened too late, this was the only time in NFL history that a new franchise could not participate inthe normal league draft and thus missed on college players. Already in the next season, NFL added a 14th team to its roster, theMinnesota Vikings. In the ensuingexpansion draft, the new team picked three players from each of the other franchises (except the still very new Cowboys). Together with the participation inthe normal draft, this gave the Vikings enough strength to score three victories in their first season.
Later in 1960s, NFL added two more franchises. In 1966, anexpansion draft was held for the newAtlanta Falcons, one year lateranother expansion draft happened for the 16th team of the league,New Orleans Saints. Like in previous drafts, new franchise could take three players from each of the existing teams (the still-new Falcons were exempt from giving up players to the Saints). However, existing teams were allowed to exclude large parts of their roster from the draft, to avoid losing their most valuable players.
During its ten-year existence, the American Football League had two expansion drafts, one in1966 for theMiami Dolphins and one in the1986 season for theCincinnati Bengals.
As ofAFL–NFL merger in1970, the league consisted of 26 teams. The merger itself didn't require expansion drafts, as AFL teams were already well-established and of comparable strength. So,the next expansion draft happened in1976, when two new teams joined the NFL: theSeattle Seahawks and theTampa Bay Buccaneers.
The last three expansion drafts took place between1995 and2002. In 1995, two new teams, theCarolina Panthers and theJacksonville Jaguars wereallowed to pick between 30 and 42 players each from existing teams' rosters.1999 NFL expansion draft was held for theCleveland Browns, the 31st team in the league. This one in particular was regarded as giving the new team too little, while letting existing teams to protect basically all players they wanted.[3] Finally, as theHouston Texans joined the league in 2002 as the 32nd and, currently, the last team,2002 NFL expansion draft was held for them. The rules of the draft had been adjusted following the reception of the 1999 one.
Baseball expansion was initially hastened by the threat of a competing league, known as theContinental League.
There have been 11 expansion drafts inNational Basketball Association history. The most recent expansion draft was in2004 when theCharlotte Bobcats (nowCharlotte Hornets) joined the league as the 30th team.
During all expansion drafts, the G League was known as the NBA Development League.
There have been 13 expansion drafts in theNational Hockey League, including the1979 draft following theNHL-WHA merger. The most recent draft was in2021, involving theSeattle Kraken.