Hi everyone! What an exciting week this has been for the National Hockey League. Not only has the trade wire opened up leading up to the annual Entry Draft, but we also got an interesting Expansion Draft as well. I don’t know about you, but I find expansion drafts fascinating. I love thinking of the possibilities of the new team’s success and analyzing the picks as they come in. Who’s gonna stay? Who’s gonna get swapped for draft picks? Who becomes this year’s William Karlsson? Will Chris Driedger be the new Marc-Andre Fleury? Since my upcoming book deals a lot with the 1974 expansion draft, it has been interesting comparing the Seattle Kraken’s first-ever roster with those of the Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals. I don’t know if Seattle can repeat Vegas’s success from four years ago, but what I do know is that the Kraken definitely had a better talent pool to choose from. There are at least four or five players chosen this time around who would have scored 20 goals this past year had the season not been truncated by the pandemic. They have a former Norris Trophy winner in Mark Giordano. The Scouts and Capitals sure never had that kind of talent in their initial rosters. Neither did the California Seals nor the other five original expansion teams.

I was hoping to post an article about the 1967 expansion draft since this here is a site that focuses on the Seals, but I had already posted on a while back, and basically every article about the draft says the exact same thing. So if you would like to read up on the original expansion draft, I invite you to go to the Seals/Barons articles section and find the one I posted from a June 7, 1967 newspaper. There is also a new article as well, from exactly twenty days later, and it is about the Seals’ preparation for the 1967-68 season, the off-ice changes that had rocked the front office, and a sweet photo of the team’s original uniforms.

I hope you all enjoy the next week, including the Amateur Draft and Free Agent Frenzy Day next Wednesday! I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears peeled, as I’m sure you all will as well.

Until next time, stay gold!