Our draft just concluded yesterday and there is much excitement about the new season starting and analyzing which teams did well, etc. However, I am more concerned with how the mechanics of the first 7 round expansion portion of the draft went, especially in regard to fairness.
The expansion teams took a total of 14 players from 14 teams. We imposed a limit of at most 3 players being taken from a single team during those 7 rounds. Here's a breakdown of all teams (listed by draft order) and how many players they lost:
| Lockport Dragons | 0 |
| The Killer Penguins | 1 |
| The Pointy Sticks | 0 |
| The Rookie | 2 |
| 20 cent kane | 2 |
| Polar Ice Dogs | 0 |
| The Blades of Steel | 1 |
| The Puckbusters | 1 |
| AR-15 | 2 |
| Gym Class Heroes | 1 |
| Two & A Half Pucks | 1 |
| Beebe Bombers | 1 |
| Team Open Ice | 1 |
| Team SJH Forever | 1 |
There is a fairly even spread above. My first impression after looking at the quality of players the expansion teams took, is that they made out maybe a little better than I had hoped. The bottom half our their rosters are on par with the rest of the league, and maybe evened things out a tad. Overall though, the expansion teams are entering the season as mid-high level in talent.
It's tough to keep fantasy hockey leagues evenly spread out talent-wise. Some of it has to do with how skilled owners are and some of it has to do with shear luck in which players blossom and which players flop. There are some teams near the bottom of the standings last year that said they would have loved to have the player chosen 3rd or 4th by the expansion teams as that player would likely lead their team in scoring.
Moving forward, we'll have to monitor the situation closely. It isn't much fun for owners if their team has no chance in winning year after year.
