Over 50 years, the NHL's expansion drafts have changed dramatically

Jim Rutherford has a pretty good appreciation for the process of the NHL’s expansion draft.

He’s watched it as a fan, benefited from it as a player and dealt with it as a general manager.

Having grown up rooting for the last Stanley Cup-winning teams of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1960s, the Beeton, Ont., native remembers seeing the NHL double in size from the so-called “original six” teams to 12 during the league’s 1967 expansion that introduced the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team Rutherford eventually would play for.

Roughly half a century later, Rutherford was the Penguins’ general manager and had to determine which players he would expose in the 2017 expansion draft for the league’s 31st team, the Vegas Golden Knights, to sort through and select.

In a week and a half, he’ll likely be a spectator as a 32nd team, the incoming Seattle Kraken, cobbles together a roster when the NHL’s latest expansion draft is held July 21.

In some capacity, Rutherford has watched every expansion draft the NHL has orchestrated. The contrasts between the drafts for Seattle and Vegas and their predecessors are quite vivid.

“The biggest difference from the Vegas draft and the Seattle draft compared to prior drafts is … they paid a lot more money to get in the league and they deserve to get a chance to be competitive right from the start — and Vegas was very competitive,” Rutherford said. “Because of that, the expansion rules are pretty favorable to the expansion team with the amount of players that each (incumbent) team can protect.”

The Kraken paid a sum of $650 million to join the league while the Golden Knights entered the NHL for a tidy $500 million. As a result, they were/will be able to select some fairly high-end players compared to who was available to previous expansion teams.

In contrast, the league’s most previous expansion around the turn of the century saw the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild each enter the league for $80 million in 2000s. The Nashville Predators (1998) and Atlanta Thrashers (1999) also paid $80 million apiece.

In 1967, the Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Oakland Seals and St. Louis Blues each ponied up $2 million to join the NHL, roughly the cost of a third-pairing defenseman by today’s standards.

Those six franchises were placed into a West Division while the incumbent six teams were placed into an East Division. Such a format led to the Blues reaching the Stanley Cup final in their first three seasons and getting swept by the powerful Montreal Canadiens (1968 and 1969) and the Boston Bruins (1970).

“St. Louis did a good job of that because they always had good goaltending. They had Glenn Hall, they had Jacques Plante. … Scotty Bowman was the coach,” Rutherford said. “They put in some important pieces to have a competitive team. Because of the coaching and the good goaltending, they were able to at least compete right through to the (Stanley Cup Final).”

Rutherford entered the NHL as a member of the Detroit Red Wings in 1970, the same year the NHL expanded again, adding the Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks. The Atlanta Flames and New York Islanders joined in 1972 while the Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals entered in 1974. All six of those teams paid an expansion fee of $6 million.

A goaltender during his 13-year playing career with the Red Wings, Penguins, Maple Leafs and Kings, Rutherford saw first-hand how the league’s expansion led to greater opportunities for players.

“It was exciting,” Rutherford said. “It was exciting for the players because when you’re around trying to get into the NHL in a six-team league, that didn’t provide much of an opportunity for guys that were capable of playing in the league. The minors, at that point in time, there were more minor leagues. The caliber of play in the minors was exceptional. The opportunity for everybody in hockey, coaches, managers, trainers, players, when the league doubled, was great.

After absorbing the Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets in 1979 through the WHA merger, the league sat at 21 teams until 1991 when the San Jose Sharks joined for an expansion fee of $45 million.

In 1992, the Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning ($45 million) were formed then in 1993, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and Florida Panthers ($50 million) pushed the league to 26 teams.

By 2000, there were 30 teams.

“People were concerned,” said Rutherford, who resigned as Penguins general manager in February. “Will the league get watered down? But based on what I’m seeing, it hasn’t. It’s created more parity. But with all the tools that these kids have right from when they start playing hockey, the technology and the coaching they get and expanding the base of not just taking players out of Canada or North America, going into Europe, it’s been great for the game and the players.”

Having taken over as the Whalers’ general manager in 1994 and overseeing that franchise’s transition into the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997, Rutherford dealt with expansion drafts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In total, he lost four mid-level players: Forward Jeff Daniels (1998), goaltender Trevor Kidd (1999), defenseman Curtis Leschyshyn and forward Robert Kron (2000 each).

“It was more a matter of business,” Rutherford said. “It just was what it was. You just did what you could. … All those players were guys that contributed to Carolina.”

By the 2017 expansion draft, the league’s economic landscape was dramatically different thanks to the salary cap that was introduced in 2005.

The presence of the salary cap was, in part, what led to the Penguins opting to expose franchise goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury and allowing Vegas to select him. It also prompted the Penguins to deal away a second-round pick in the 2020 entry draft to the Golden Knights to guarantee they selected Fleury instead of some other player they did not protect.

“Oh, (the cap has) changed it dramatically, “Rutherford said. “We know first-hand here in Pittsburgh how much it changed. We weren’t looking to get Fleury out of here. But with what his cap hit was and where it was going to go to, that’s what led to that decision. You saw other deals that Vegas made because of the cap.”

Given the NHL’s salary cap has remained flat at $81.5 million because of ramifications from the pandemic, Rutherford suggests the practice of incumbent teams dealing future assets such as draft picks to the Kraken in order to get them to take specific players off their payrolls will only be amplified compared to the 2017 expansion draft.

“You’re going to see a bunch of them here with Seattle I’m sure where other teams are going to try to get relief,” Rutherford said. “I thought at one point, Seattle wasn’t going to have the same benefit that Vegas did because one-time through, the general managers might approach it a little different. But because the (salary) cap didn’t grow because of (covid-19), it’s a flat cap here now and certainly not what teams expected. I would expect there’s going to be a number of teams calling (Kraken general manager) Ron Francis trying to get him to take a player the same way we did with Fleury to Vegas.”

While the expansion draft has changed dramatically over 50 years, Rutherford suggests one attribute that has endured over all this time is the opportunity it offers for players on the move.

“The biggest thing was when you were looking a player off your team, one of your teammates, you wondered who was going to fill that hole,” Rutherford said. “A player going to a new team could actually benefit sometimes. Like when a player gets traded sometimes, you don’t want to get traded but sometimes it gives a player a chance to start over, get a fresh start and players can excel in those situations.”