Blazers Take Laverty in Expansion Draft

The Boston Blaxers took Kyle Laverty as the Bandits choice in the expansion draft yesterday. Laverty had 9 points last season (2-7) with the Bandits playing in all 16 games and had 2 assists in the playoffs. Laverty was one of 12 players picked by the Blazers yesterday. This will be a loss to the Bandits who have a good group of defenders in Chris White, Billy Dee Smith, and Clay Hill. The Bandits do have last year's rookie Kyle Schmelze who played in 8 games last year and registered 5 points (2-3) to replace Laverty and that seems to be the likely replacement

The Blazers took 12 players total, one from each of the other teams in the league. Besides these players, the Blazers also have Dan Dawson and Peter Veltman from the Sting Dispersal Draft. The other players were:

1. Mike Poulin - G Toronto
2. Mitch Belisle - D New York
3. Matt Lyons - F Rochester
4. Kyle Laverty - D Buffalo
5. John Gallant - D Colorado
6. Jake Bergey - F Philadelphia
7. Devan Wray - D Calgary
8. Kyle Ross - D Minnesota
9. Tom Johnson - F San Jose
10. Matt Holman - F Chicago
11. Michael Kilby - D Portland
12. Cam Bergman - G Edmonton

It seems that the Blazers wanted to establish their defense through the expansion draft and then build their offense through the Entry Draft. For now, Dan Dawson is going to be the centerpiece of the offense, though it seems that Dawson is still going to hold out to be traded most likely out west. The Blazers are definitely in the building stages and will most likely not contend for anything this season but it will be interesting to see where this team goes from here.