On 2020-11-17 05:46, Bruce Scott wrote:
On 2020-11-17, Mark <Pammiesheart@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I have no idea what an expansion draft is. [...]
Common in US sports. I don't know the details that decide which players
are eligible. IIRC each team has to put one or few on the block.
Maybe Portland wants to move to younger players...
Yeah, very common in North American sports. Drafts in general happen
regularly (Mexican league also has a kind of draft), but when a league
expands by granting a franchise to a new ownership group in a given
city, the model is to give this group access to some established
players through an expansion draft. Exact model varies from sport to
sport and year to year, even, and I am most familiar with hockey, so
things could be significantly different in other sports.
When there is an expansion draft, each existing team is allowed to
protect a certain number of players on its current roster from the draft
(say 1 goalie, 5 defenders, 10 forwards in hockey - as I say it is a bit different every time). All other players can be claimed by the new team
or teams, with certain players being exempt (below a certain age or
experience level I think ) and not having to be protected. There is
usually a stipulation that each established team can only lose X players
to the draft - the value of X depends on how many new teams are drafting
and other factors. Sometimes X is broken down into the positions of the players. So the expansion team(s) go through the list of established
players and take turns picking any unprotected players they might want.
Anyway, teams will "expose" players with higher salaries, or who are in
their twilight years, or who are close to the end of a contract and
unlikely to resign. It becomes a bit of a game of chicken, and
sometimes general managers will trade away a player so as not to have to expose them in the draft (incoming player could be in a different
position, or not eligible to be drafted, or could actually only be draft choices in a future annual draft).
Some teams (eg. Las Vegas Golden Knights not long ago) can do extremely
well out of expansion drafts and become highly competitive in their
first year. Others take ages to get up to speed in spite of this
initial draft.
There is also something called a dispersal draft when a team goes belly
up. The remaining teams take turns (usually starting with the one with
the worst record) picking over the assets of the dismantled team.
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)