EHE approves expansion to Las Vegas

(See also:  Full EHE Expansion Draft and 2017 Entry Draft details)


LAS VEGAS – As has been previously hinted over the past couple of months, the Elite Hockey Experience made the long-awaited announcement Monday that the league will add a new franchise in Las Vegas, expanding to 31 teams for the 2017-18 season. This will be the first league's first expansion since its inception in 2014.

"Now that we have established ourselves as a stable and credible source for hockey simulation, we feel that this is the perfect time to bring another team into the family," said commissioner Kevin Lacy during a press conference held at the Wynn Las Vegas.

League management hopes to have a team name and logo in place sometime in September. The anticipated moniker will be "Knights," although trademarking has been problematic thus far and the team may need to seek an alternative.

The choice for Las Vegas was namely due to the need to add more teams out west to the Gretzky Conference. Despite being the stronger overall conference in both EHE seasons, the Lemieux Conference has two more teams than the Gretzky. League officials stressed the importance of creating a greater regional balance between the two.

"We would honestly prefer to have two expansion teams in 2017 but Seattle doesn't have their act together and apparently Portland must have fallen into the Pacific Ocean because nobody seems to be talking about them anymore," said one league official.

The club will join the Pacific Division and play at the brand new T-Mobile Arena, west of the Las Vegas Strip.

A search for a general manager of the club will begin in the spring, in preparation of an expansion draft in late-June 2017. The rules for how the franchise will be built were outlined in a supplemental media package and designed to give the club the best opportunity to compete immediately.

Among the key information presented Monday:

• Las Vegas must select one player from each of the existing 30 teams, including at least 14 forwards, nine defensemen and three goalies, and must meet the 2016-17 minimum floor in aggregate salary.
   
• The existing 30 teams will have the option to protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goalie, or eight skaters regardless of position and one goalie, from the expansion draft.
   
• At least one defenseman and two forwards must be exposed that are under contract for 2017-18 and will have played 40 or more NHL-level games during the 2016-17 season, or 70 or more NHL-level games since the start of the 2015-16 season.
   
• Goalies exposed for the draft can either be under contract for the 2017-18 season or scheduled to become a restricted free agent in the summer of 2017, but also must have started at least 12 NHL-level games during the 2016-17 season, or 20 or more NHL-level games since the start of the 2015-16 season.
   
• All first- and second-year pros and all unsigned draft picks are exempt from the expansion draft and will not have to be protected.

"It's going to be quite intriguing to see whether GMs are truly paying attention to their teams this year," said Lacy. "[They] will need to keep a close eye on how many games their players have played this season in order to meet the expansion draft criteria, or else they will be forced to expose a player they may not have wanted to."

In addition, changes were announced to extend the EHE Entry Draft from five rounds to seven for 2017. The Las Vegas franchise will be given the same odds as the team that finishes with the third fewest points in the 2016-17 season for the draft lottery. They will be guaranteed to have no lower than the 6th overall selection in 2017 and will own the third pick in each subsequent round. They will also be given an eighth pick at the end of the draft, the 218th overall selection.

Vegas is hockey. Vegas is coming!