The National Hockey League's "original six" teams had their rosters raided 50 years ago today when the expansion draft was held that expanded the size of the league from six teams to 12.
That included the first batch of players who would try out for the Minnesota North Star rosters. The list of players comes from the VintageMNHockey Twitter feed.
If you're of a certain age, you'd probably heard of a few of these guys, while some of the others used the NHL's doubling in size to carve a solid place as professionals.
Goalie Cesare Maniago was an example of the latter, coming to Minnesota after playing parts of a couple of seasons for the New York Rangers, and establishing himself as a North Stars fixture for the next decade. The veterans included former Chicago defenseman Moose Vasko, Parker McDonald of Detroit and Jean-Guy Talbot of Montreal, all of whom played bigger roles with their old teams than in Minnesota.
HOWARD SINKER
