expansion team

noun

, Sports.

1. a new team in a league, composed largely of players from established league teams and formed when the league expands its membership.

Word History and Origins

Origin of expansion team¹

First recorded in 1965–70

Example Sentences

It’s hard to believe that an expansion team has so quickly established itself as one of the best teams in the NHL, but here we are.

From FiveThirtyEight

For Elo’s purposes, we didn’t want to necessarily overreact — and overfit — to Vegas’s instant success, but it’s plain that the days of terrible expansion teams are over in a modern, salary-capped NHL that charges $650 million expansion fees.

From FiveThirtyEight

The era of expansion teams needing a handful of years to become competitive was over — it was this dynamic that allowed the Vegas Golden Knights to reach the Stanley Cup Final in their first year of existence.

From FiveThirtyEight

The Vegas Golden Knights — the NHL’s most recent expansion team before the soon-to-debut Kraken — flipped the struggling expansion team trope on its head when they hit the ice in 2017.

From FiveThirtyEight

The same year Tepper bought the Panthers, the NHL’s newest hockey team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, accomplished what only one expansion team had done before by making it to the league finals in its inaugural season.

From ProPublica