An expansion draft, in professional sports, occurs when a sports league decides to create one or more new expansion teams or franchises. This occurs mainly in North American sports and closed 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 entry draft. 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 the free agent system has modified this somewhat. Marc-André Fleury, who won three Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins, is a notable exception of a star player in their prime being left exposed in an expansion draft, being made available for the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft after Fleury was made expendable due to the rise of Matt 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 a dispersal draft.
During its history, the NFL 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 from AFL. The last was held in 2002, as the league reached its current state of 32 teams.
The first NFL expansion draft took place in 1960 to let the just-enfranchised Dallas 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 in the normal league draft and thus missed on college players. Already in the next season, NFL added a 14th team to its roster, the Minnesota Vikings. In the ensuing expansion draft, the new team picked three players from each of the other franchises (except the still very new Cowboys). Together with the participation in the 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, an expansion draft was held for the new Atlanta Falcons, one year later another 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.
The last three expansion drafts took place between 1995 and 2002. In 1995, two new teams, the Carolina Panthers and the Jacksonville Jaguars were allowed to pick between 30 and 42 players each from existing teams' rosters. 1999 NFL expansion draft was held for the Cleveland 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 the Houston 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.
Australian rules football
1986 VFL draft – one of the two expansion teams, the West Coast Eagles, was exempt from the draft until 1988 as part of their agreement to enter the VFL.
1996 AFL draft – actually an expansion and dispersal draft, as Port Adelaide entered the AFL for the 1997 season, while the Brisbane Bears took over Fitzroy's playing operations at the end of the 1996 season.
