An expansion draft, in professional

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...

, occurs when a sports league decides to create one or more new

expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...

s or

franchise Franchise may refer to: Business and law * Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees * Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...

s. This occurs mainly in North American sports. 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 Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to: Watercraft dimensions * Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel * Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail * Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...

. 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 usually 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, although the advent of the

free agent In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with other clubs or franchises; i.e., not under contract to any specific team. The term is also used in reference to a player who is under contract at present but who is a ...

system has modified this somewhat.

Marc-André Fleury Marc-André Fleury (born November 28, 1984) is a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender for the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League (NHL). Drafted out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) first overall by the Pittsbur ...

, who won three

Stanley Cup The Stanley Cup (french: La Coupe Stanley) is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, an ...

s with the

Pittsburgh Penguins The Pittsburgh Penguins (colloquially known as the Pens) are a professional ice hockey team based in Pittsburgh. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference, and have playe ...

, 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 The Vegas Golden Knights are a professional ice hockey team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference. Founded in 2017 as an expan ...

in the

2017 NHL Expansion Draft Seventeen or 17 may refer to: *17 (number), the natural number following 16 and preceding 18 * one of the years 17 BC, AD 17, 1917, 2017 Literature Magazines * ''Seventeen'' (American magazine), an American magazine * ''Seventeen'' (Japanese m ...

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. 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 A dispersal draft is a process in professional sports for assigning players to a new team when their current team ceases to exist or is merged with another team. Like most other sports drafts, most dispersal drafts are conducted in North America. ...

Expansion drafts

American football

* 1960 NFL expansion draft *

1961 NFL expansion draft The 1961 NFL expansion draft was a National Football League (NFL) draft in which a new expansion team, named the Minnesota Vikings, selected its first players. That selection was provided by the expansion draft, held on January 26, 1961. In August ...

* 1966 NFL expansion draft * 1967 NFL expansion draft * 1976 NFL expansion draft * 1995 NFL expansion draft * 1999 NFL expansion draft * 2002 NFL expansion draft

Australian rules football

* 1986 VFL draft – one of the two expansion teams, the

West Coast Eagles The West Coast Eagles are a professional Australian rules football club based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 as one of two expansion teams in the Australian Football League (AFL), then known as the Victorian Football ...

, was exempt from the draft until 1988 as part of their agreement to enter the VFL. * 1994 AFL draft * 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 operations after Fitzroy had folded at the end of round 22. * 2010 AFL draft * 2011 AFL draft

Baseball

Baseball expansion was initially hastened by the threat of a competing league, known as the

Continental League The Continental League of Professional Baseball Clubs (known as the Continental League or CL) was a proposed third major league for baseball in the United States and Canada. The league was announced in 1959 and scheduled to begin play in the 19 ...

. *

1960 Major League Baseball expansion draft The 1960 MLB expansion draft was held by Major League Baseball on December 14, 1960, to fill the rosters of the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators. The Angels and Senators (who later became the Texas Rangers) were new franchises that ...

* 1961 Major League Baseball expansion draft *

1968 Major League Baseball expansion draft The 1968 Major League Baseball expansion draft was conducted to stock up the rosters of four expansion teams in Major League Baseball created via the 1969 Major League Baseball expansion and which would begin play in the 1969 season. The expansi ...

* 1976 Major League Baseball expansion draft * 1992 Major League Baseball expansion draft *

1997 Major League Baseball expansion draft On November 18, 1997, Major League Baseball (MLB) held an expansion draft to allow two expansion teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, to build their rosters prior to debuting in the National League West and American League ...

Basketball

NBA

There have been 11 expansion drafts in

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

history. The most recent expansion draft was in 2004 when the

Charlotte Bobcats Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populou ...

(now

Charlotte Hornets The Charlotte Hornets are an American professional basketball team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Hornets compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Southeast Division, and pla ...

) joined the league as the 30th team.

NBA Development League

* 2006 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2007 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2008 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2009 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2010 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2013 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2014 NBA Development League expansion draft * 2015 NBA Development League expansion draft

PBA

* 1990 PBA Expansion Draft * 2000 PBA Expansion Draft * 2014 PBA Expansion Draft

Canadian football

* 2002 CFL Expansion Draft *

2013 CFL Expansion Draft The 2013 Canadian Football League Expansion Draft was a three-round CFL Draft that took place on Monday December 16, 2013. It was designed to assign players from existing CFL teams to the expansion Ottawa Redblacks. The structure of the draft was ...

Ice hockey

There have been 13 expansion drafts in the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

, including the 1979 draft following the

NHL-WHA merger The 1979 NHL expansion was the culmination of several years of negotiations between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the World Hockey Association (WHA) that resulted in the WHA and its six surviving franchises folding in return for the owners ...

. The most recent draft was in

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, involving the

Seattle Kraken The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference and began play during the league's 2021–22 season. ...

Soccer

* 1997 MLS Expansion Draft *

2004 MLS Expansion Draft The 2004 MLS Expansion Draft was held on November 19, 2004 and consisted of 10 rounds. The two new teams, Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake, drafted players from the other 10 Major League Soccer teams. Existing MLS teams were allowed to protect 12 pl ...

* 2006 MLS Expansion Draft * 2007 MLS Expansion Draft * 2008 MLS Expansion Draft * 2009 MLS Expansion Draft * 2010 MLS Expansion Draft * 2011 MLS Expansion Draft * 2014 MLS Expansion Draft * 2016 MLS Expansion Draft *

2017 MLS Expansion Draft The 2017 MLS Expansion Draft was a special draft for the Major League Soccer expansion team Los Angeles FC held on December 12, 2017. Lists of protected rosters and draft-eligible players were released by MLS on December 10, 2017. Format The r ...

* 2018 MLS Expansion Draft *

2019 MLS Expansion Draft The 2019 MLS Expansion Draft was a special draft for the Major League Soccer expansion teams Inter Miami CF and Nashville SC that was held on November 19, 2019. On October 6, 2019, Inter Miami CF won the coin toss for the Expansion Priority Draf ...

* 2020 MLS Expansion Draft

References

External links

Major League Baseball Historical Expansion Drafts
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