NHL expansion is coming whether we like it or not — personally, I’m pretty excited about it — and with it will be an expansion draft that will at least in some way affect every single team in the league.
We haven’t seen one of these since 2000 when the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild entered the league, and that was before the salary cap was a thing so things are considerably different now. But at the NHL general managers meeting in Florida today, some details leaked out about just how an expansion draft might look.
For starters, it looks like the precursor to any expansion draft — actual expansion by one team or two teams — will be determined before June. Las Vegas almost seems to be a lock for a team with their brand new arena right on the Vegas Strip and their impressive ticket campaign that has proven the city has a fan base.
But the question then becomes whether or not another market is added as well. Quebec City has a new arena and deep-pocketed corporate owners at the ready, but they are hampered by a weak Canadian dollar. Seattle is a market the league wants but they can’t seem to get out of their own way with regards to building a new hockey arena, and they haven’t submitted an expansion proposal.
This process will be much more clear in the very near future: NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Wednesday morning that they expect to announce a decision — zero teams, one team or two teams — by the draft in June of this year.
So with that, we have some clarity on how an expansion draft would work. Let’s get into it.
The basics of an expansion draft
- Teams can only lose one player for each expansion team that’s added. So if there’s one team, the Flyers could lose one player. If two teams are added, they could lose two.
- Teams can protect three defensemen, seven forwards and one goalie OR any group of eight skaters, regardless of position, and one goalie.
- First-and-second-year professional players would be exempt, so you wouldn’t need to use a protected spot on them.
- One major difference between this draft and the last expansion draft is that teams can only protect one goalie. As Craig Custance points out, what might that mean for a team like Pittsburgh with Marc-Andre Fleury in the NHL but a very highly touted future goaltender in Matt Murray as well? Tough decisions here. /
What about players with no-movement clauses?
There’s no decision yet on if players on no-movement clauses will be exempt. According to Elliotte Friedman, teams generally hate NMCs and the league would like to ditch them for purposes of an expansion draft. The CBA might even allow for that. But the NHLPA would fight the league on it, and Friedman says “there does not seem to be a thirst inside NHL offices to fight the expected union pushback.” So it’s likely that players with NMCs — like Claude Giroux — will be exempt from an expansion draft.
Now there’s still debate on whether teams would still have to use a protected spot on those NMC players. The league wants the expansion teams to be competitive — unlike in every other recent expansion draft, where the teams got shit players and therefire were shit for quite a while afterward — and penalizing teams with many NMCs is a way to do that. Here’s more from Friedman on this subject:
Second, does a player with a no-move clause count among the guys you have to protect? This is relevant because everyone is expecting Commissioner Gary Bettman to make any new team competitive. There will be no creation of patsies here.
Let’s say you’ve got three no-move clauses. Must they be part of your protection list because they can’t be selected? If yes, it increases the risk of exposing more of your roster. No one qualifies for a no-move until they are eligible for unrestricted free agency. That’s either seven years in the NHL or age 25. There’s a gap between those ineligible for an expansion draft and those eligible for no-move protection.
And of course, they kind of have to do it like this, right? If a team has five players on no-movement clauses and they don’t have to protect those players, that’s five extra players that are not subject to the draft. All 30 teams have to be on equal footing here.
What’s the timing on all of this?
This isn’t going to happen this summer. If the NHL expands, it will be announced this June but the new teams won’t start playing until 2017-18.
The expansion draft would likely take place in the summer of 2017. In the past, expansion drafts have taken place during the late June period between the end of the Stanley Cup Final and before the real NHL Draft. So that’s when we’d likely see it: June 20-something, 2017.
We’ll be back later today or tomorrow with a deeper look at what the Flyers protected list might look like, and more importantly, which players they could lose in an expansion draft.
