NHL expansion team drafting WHA players

ebenton96 · 10-11-2019, 02:20 PM

I am currently doing a historical game with automatic league evolution turned off and I kept the WHA active in the game. I decided to expand the NHL by 1 team and generated an expansion draft for the team. When the time came for the expansion draft, the team drafted almost entirely out of the WHA. Those players are still with their WHA teams but now the expansion team only has four players on their roster.

I also expanded the WHA by 2 teams the same year, did an expansion draft, and it seems like they only drafted players from the WHA and not the NHL so it seems like this issue only exists for NHL expansion teams.

JeffR · 10-11-2019, 02:34 PM

The expansion drafts always include player rights so RFA's, etc. aren't exempt. But it looks like we may need to adjust the draft AI a bit if it's going that heavily towards the players without NHL contracts.

The WHA teams not drafting NHL players is most likely due to it being much rarer for a WHA team to own WHA rights to an NHL player than the reverse.

10-11-2019, 02:20 PM	#1
ebenton96 Bat Boy Join Date: Dec 2016 Posts: 15	NHL expansion team drafting WHA players I am currently doing a historical game with automatic league evolution turned off and I kept the WHA active in the game. I decided to expand the NHL by 1 team and generated an expansion draft for the team. When the time came for the expansion draft, the team drafted almost entirely out of the WHA. Those players are still with their WHA teams but now the expansion team only has four players on their roster. I also expanded the WHA by 2 teams the same year, did an expansion draft, and it seems like they only drafted players from the WHA and not the NHL so it seems like this issue only exists for NHL expansion teams.

10-11-2019, 02:34 PM	#2
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 17,255	The expansion drafts always include player rights so RFA's, etc. aren't exempt. But it looks like we may need to adjust the draft AI a bit if it's going that heavily towards the players without NHL contracts. The WHA teams not drafting NHL players is most likely due to it being much rarer for a WHA team to own WHA rights to an NHL player than the reverse.