The expansion team(s) then are allowed to select players not on the protected lists in a manner somewhat similar to an entry draft.
For this reason, expansion teams are often noncompetitive in their early years in a league,[1] although the advent of the free agent system has modified this somewhat.
Marc-André Fleury, who won three Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins, is a notable exception of a star player in their prime being left exposed in an expansion draft, being made available for the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft after Fleury was made expendable due to the rise of Matt Murray at goaltender.
The first NFL expansion draft took place in 1960 to let the just-enfranchised Dallas Cowboys pick their initial players.
However, existing teams were allowed to exclude large parts of their roster from the draft, to avoid losing their most valuable players.
During its ten-year existence, the American Football League had two expansion drafts, one in 1966 for the Miami Dolphins and one in season for the Cincinnati Bengals.
So, the next expansion draft happened in 1976, when two new teams joined the NFL: the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
[3] Finally, as the Houston Texans joined the league in 2002 as the 32nd and, currently, the last team, 2002 NFL expansion draft was held for them.