It is not common for a 21-year old to put his name in the sports history books. However, Reid Duke did just this on March 6th, 2017. Duke did not break any scoring records or even play a single game in the NHL. Instead, he was the first player ever signed by the Vegas Golden Knights hockey organization. This June, the rest of Reid Duke’s future teammates will be selected in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. This draft will bring together the first thirty-man roster for the Golden Knights, the NHL’s 31st team. The Golden Knights franchise will carry heavy expectations as the first major professional sports team in the city of Las Vegas. For better or worse, the Vegas Golden Knights will change the city of Las Vegas and prove that it can be a hockey city.
The National Hockey League was founded 100 years ago, and started with six teams in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York, and Toronto. The first expansion and subsequent expansion draft occurred in 1967 when the league doubled its teams from six to twelve. Since this first expansion, the NHL has held ten other expansion drafts and grown to 30 teams. In expansion drafts, existing NHL teams can protect a specific number of players on their rosters. These protected players are not available to be drafted while all other active players on their roster can be drafted by the expansion teams. In previous NHL expansion drafts, existing teams could protect many of the players on their rosters. This created a very low ceiling for the talent available to the expansion teams.
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Sean KageffSenior at the University of Michigan studying Actuarial Math CategoriesArchives |