Looking at this New York Islanders expansion team from 1972 leaves you with a single impression; slim pickings.
Something echoed by former New York Islanders General Manager and Hockey Hall of Fame Member as an architect, Bill Torrey repeated in a recent Reddit AMA:
The difference is, as an expansion team, you’re starting from scratch. The Islanders, we built through the draft, not the expansion draft. I didn’t like what the league gave us, and I knew that as fast as I could get rid of almost all of them, I was going to. What kept me going, I did an awful lot of travel, I saw an awful lot of junior games in the first two years that I ran the Islanders, I hit every junior rink.