The rule interpretation thats causing NWSL expansion draft chaos

It’s expansion draft week in the NWSL, with the main event on Friday, Dec. 15 (live coverage on CBS Sports Network starting at 7 p.m.). But it wouldn’t be the NWSL without at least one wrinkle heading into the event, this time with the language of the draft rules posing a problem for teams attempting to trade for protection. 

With the deadline for final trades and transactions set for first thing on Tuesday morning (Dec. 12, at 9 a.m. ET), followed by each team’s lists of protected and unprotected players due at 2 p.m. the same day, this is setting up for a very interesting Monday in the NWSL.

The 2024 NWSL Expansion Draft is around the corner!

Swipe to learn the rules and procedures 📚

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 22, 2023

To help you prepare for the week ahead of Friday night’s draft, here’s a breakdown of the rules and who has expansion draft protection, plus how a rule interpretation could wreak havoc for teams that have traded for protection from one team — but could still lose two players from their roster — and the implications this has on the NWSL trade market as a whole.

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What are the rules?

This year’s rules dropped on Nov. 1 (here’s the full PDF, if you are so inclined). The two teams picking on Friday are Bay FC and Utah Royals FC. Bay FC will lead off, with the two teams going back and forth for 12 rounds total, and each expansion club picking up to 12 players total.

The rest of the teams in the NWSL have to designate their players as protected (unable to be selected by either expansion team) or unprotected. A club can protect only nine players in this draft — but if Bay or Utah picks one player from the existing teams, they can then designate a 10th player as protected. If players have a no-trade clause in their contracts, they must be protected.

There are some other players exempt from this process, as well. Any unsigned free agent, restricted or unrestricted, is off the table, as the two expansion teams could sign them outside the draft (both teams have already made free agency signings). This rule has essentially delayed the movement of players in free agency — unless they planned to sign with an expansion club from the jump, free agents could actually help out their current or future teams by staying off the books until Dec. 16 to keep a protected spot open for another player.

Under-18 players are not expansion draft eligible, and any player on a team’s discovery list isn’t, either.

This information won’t be made public, but each existing team has to inform the NWSL and the two expansion teams of any reason why a player on their club might not be available to play next season as of Jan. 1, 2024, whether that’s through injury, retirement, loan, etc. to allow the expansion teams to make an informed decision before selecting a player. Bay FC and the Royals will also receive compensation numbers and contract terms for all unprotected players in the expansion draft.

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Teams’ protected and unprotected lists will be released on Tuesday night by the NWSL. On Friday night, when things get started, Bay and Utah will get three minutes to make their picks each round, with two five-minute timeouts. The league also has the power to hit pause at any time, for any amount of time.

Now, the wrinkle. Here’s how this year’s rules state how each of the 12 existing teams may be affected: “Each Team may lose no more than two (2) unprotected Players in the Expansion Draft.”

That’s somehow both exactly the same, yet very different, compared to the rules for the last expansion draft in 2021, held for Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC. So let’s dig into it.

Wait… so what’s changed?

First, here are the full rules for “Expansion Draft selection criteria and limitations” for 2023:

• Existing teams may lose no more than two unprotected players.
• Bay FC and Utah Royals FC may select up to 12 players.
• The expansion teams may not trade draft picks, but any player selected in the expansion draft is eligible to be traded following the conclusion of the draft (an ice cold maneuver, but one we have seen before).
• Bay and Utah are also able to pass during any round, forfeiting a selection.

Now, let’s compare and contrast to 2021’s expansion draft rules. There’s one key difference between these two drafts, and that was the existence of U.S. allocated players at that point in time — though that element of the expansion draft doesn’t impact the difference in language, that is our wrinkle at hand.

The rules for the 2021 expansion draft had essentially the exact same language as 2023 in this rule here: “Each Team may lose no more than two (2) unprotected Players in the Expansion Draft, of which only one (1) may be a U.S. Soccer Allocated Player.”

But what 2021’s expansion draft rules also had is two additional rules in this section, which created two additional limitations for Angel City and the Wave: “Each Team may lose no more than one (1) Player from each position group,” and, more importantly, “Each Expansion Team may select one (1) Player or U.S. Allocated Player from each Team, for a total of nine (9) selections.”

So in 2021, the two California teams knew they could only pick one player from each existing team. When Racing traded for expansion draft protection from Angel City, that explicitly limited the Wave to only selecting one player from Louisville.

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In 2023, that rule does not exist. So what does this mean? Let’s use an example: Kansas City did a trade with Bay FC, sending Alex Loera for expansion draft protection and $175,000 in allocation money. But KC does not have draft protection from Utah. The Royals could, conceivably, pick two players from the Current’s roster on Friday night.  

Bay or Utah could also double dip from any team that hasn’t traded their way out of the expansion draft.

Basically, for the previous expansion draft, teams could minimize the impact to their existing rosters even if they could only get one trade across the line — but this year, even if they have traded with one of the two expansion teams, they could still lose two players.

On Sunday, a NWSL spokesperson confirmed this reading of the 2023 rules, and noted that the NWSL’s board of governors and its competition committee approved them.

The Athletic reached out to members of the competition committee on Sunday. San Diego Wave FC president Jill Ellis told The Athletic that, after conversations with the rest of the group, a majority of its five members (including herself) had not read the rule with this same understanding as the league. 

“We did not interpret this rule in this manner,” Ellis said, “because it does not benefit a team to seek protection from one team when they can still be exposed by the other.” 

Who has expansion draft protection so far?

Congrats to the Orlando Pride and general manager Haley Carter, who are likely watching this all unfold with some popcorn in hand, thanks to being the only team so far to pull off double expansion draft protection. It also doesn’t help that many clubs are still without leadership on their sporting side, whether that’s a head coach or a general manager. In the Chicago Red Stars’ case, it’s both. 

Here’s the breakdown as it stands on Sunday:

2023 Expansion Draft Protection

Four teams are carrying the most risk into Friday’s expansion draft: Kansas City, North Carolina, Louisville and San Diego. Despite their trades, they could still lose two players — and almost certainly raising the value of any potential trade for protection from the other expansion team to an astronomical value. 

One team staffer, briefed on conversations concerning the expansion draft who was unauthorized to speak on the record, said that the value of protection from a single expansion team had nearly doubled over the past two or three days, from $150,000 to $250,000. These rough numbers were confirmed by an employee of another team on Sunday.

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Ultimately, this impacts every single team in the NWSL. Right now, there’s zero incentive for any team without protection to try and acquire it, because if they only manage a deal with one of Bay or Utah, they could still lose two players — and attempting trades with both teams will cost too much, potentially as much as $500,000. That holds implications beyond the expansion draft trade market, as each increase in the inflation of allocation money means every trade gets more and more expensive moving forward. There’s still no sign that the NWSL as a whole has a plan to bring the market back down to a more reasonable level.

(Photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)

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