The NHL entry draft history is a wild ride. Honestly, if you looked at the first-ever meeting back in 1963, you wouldn't even recognize it as the same sport. It wasn’t a spectacle. No bright lights. No flashy suits or emotional phone calls from GMs on a stage. It was basically a quiet meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal where a handful of guys decided the fate of 21 teenagers.
Most people think the draft has always been this massive pipeline for talent. It wasn't. For decades, the league was a "sponsorship" game. Big teams like the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs literally owned entire junior leagues. If you were a talented kid in certain parts of Quebec, you were effectively born a Hab. The draft was actually created to break that monopoly. It was a messy, slow-motion revolution that took over twenty years to actually work.
The Secretive Beginnings of 1963
The first draft—then called the NHL Amateur Draft—was a bit of a dud. You've got to understand the context. The "Original Six" teams still had their hooks in almost every promising player through those sponsorship C-forms. This meant the pool of players available to be drafted in '63 was... well, it was the leftovers.
Garry Monahan was the first-ever pick, taken by Montreal. He was 16. Imagine that today. He was "flabbergasted" because he didn't even know the draft was happening. Most of the players picked that year never even sniffed the NHL. Only five out of the 21 ever played a game. It wasn't exactly a star-studded gala. The local newspapers barely gave it four paragraphs.
1967 changed everything. The league doubled in size from six teams to twelve. Suddenly, the "sponsorship" model was impossible. You couldn't have six new teams from places like Los Angeles and St. Louis trying to find players if Montreal and Toronto owned all the kids in Canada. The league started phasing out the old system, and by 1969, the draft finally became the primary way to get new talent. That was the year Réjean Houle went first overall, and the modern era sort of kicked off.
Why the NHL Entry Draft History Changed Forever in 1979
For years, it was the "Amateur Draft." Then the WHA (World Hockey Association) showed up. They were the renegades. They started signing "underage" players and guys who were already professionals in other leagues. The NHL was losing the talent war because their rules were too stiff.
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By 1979, the WHA folded, and the NHL absorbed four of its teams: the Oilers, Whalers, Jets, and Nordiques. This forced a massive name change to the NHL Entry Draft. Why? Because it wasn't just for "amateurs" anymore. They needed a way to bring in the guys who had already been playing pro in the WHA.
- 1980: The draft went public. They moved it to the Montreal Forum. People actually showed up to watch.
- 1984: It hit the airwaves. The CBC started televising it.
- 1987: It finally left Canada, heading to Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena.
This was the era of the "Mega-Draft." In 1980, they lowered the age to 18. This was huge. Before this, you usually had to wait until you were 20. Suddenly, teams were betting their entire future on teenagers who hadn't even finished high school. It made the draft way more volatile.
The War on Tanking and the Lottery Chaos
If you've followed hockey for more than a week, you know about "tanking." In the early 90s, it got bad. Real bad. The 1993 draft is the poster child for this. The Ottawa Senators were accused of being "bad on purpose" to snag Alexandre Daigle. Daigle was the "can't-miss" kid. He famously said, "I'm glad I got drafted first, because no one remembers number two."
The number two pick was Chris Pronger. A Hall of Famer. Daigle? Not so much.
To stop teams from racing to the bottom, the NHL introduced the Draft Lottery in 1995. Initially, it was pretty tame. You could only move up four spots. If you were the 10th worst team, the best you could do was 6th. It didn't "fix" everything, but it added a layer of gambling that fans loved (and GMs hated).
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Then came the 2005 "Crosby Lottery." After a whole season was lost to a lockout, every team had a shot at Sidney Crosby. It was a weighted lottery based on playoff appearances and first-overall picks from the previous few years. The Penguins won. The rest is history.
Draft Steals and Absolute Busts
The nhl entry draft history is littered with "what were they thinking?" moments. Take the 1999 draft. Most scouts call it the worst class ever. The Patrik Stefan pick at number one for Atlanta is legendary for all the wrong reasons. He's mostly remembered now for missing an empty net on a breakaway, not for his play.
But then you have the steals. This is where the real scouts earn their money.
- Luc Robitaille (1984): Picked 171st overall. He's one of the highest-scoring left-wingers ever.
- Henrik Zetterberg (1999): Picked 210th. The Red Wings basically found a Hall of Famer in the 7th round.
- Pavel Datsyuk (1998): Picked 171st. Another Detroit miracle.
- Brett Hull (1984): Picked 117th. He scored 741 goals. Every team passed on him multiple times because they thought he was too slow or too "round."
The reality is that drafting is a coin flip. Even with modern analytics and 24/7 scouting, you're still trying to predict what a 17-year-old kid will look like when he’s a 25-year-old man. It's impossible. That's why the draft remains the most stressful day of the year for front offices.
The European Invasion and Modern Shifts
In the 70s and 80s, the draft was almost exclusively Canadian. Americans were rare. Europeans were "risky" because of the Iron Curtain. If you drafted a Russian in 1985, there was a good chance he’d never be allowed to leave the Soviet Union to play for you.
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When the Berlin Wall fell, the draft changed overnight. The 90s saw a massive influx of Russian and Czech talent. Suddenly, the "best player available" wasn't always a kid from Ontario. It was a guy from Omsk or Kladno.
Nowadays, the draft is a global machine. We’ve seen number-one picks from the USA (Auston Matthews, Patrick Kane), Switzerland (Nico Hischier), and Slovakia (Juraj Slafkovský). It’s not a Canadian club anymore.
Starting in 2025, the league is moving to a "decentralized" draft. Basically, teams will stay in their home cities and run the draft from their own war rooms, much like the NFL. It marks the end of an era where all 32 teams sat at tables on one giant floor, whispering and making deals in person. It’s more efficient, sure, but it loses some of that "high school cafeteria" energy that made the draft floor so chaotic.
How to Use This History to Your Advantage
Understanding the history of the draft isn't just for trivia. If you're a fan or a bettor, it gives you perspective on how to judge your team’s performance.
- Don't overreact to Round 1: History shows that about 40% of first-rounders don't become "permanent" NHLers (playing over 200 games).
- Watch the "Overage" players: Recently, teams have found massive value in drafting 19 or 20-year-olds who were passed over the year before. They are more "ready" than the 18-year-olds.
- The "Relative Age Effect": A weirdly high percentage of NHL players are born in the first three months of the year. Why? Because when they were six years old, they were bigger than the kids born in December, so they got more ice time and better coaching. Look for the "late year" birthdays—they are often the hidden gems who just haven't hit their growth spurt yet.
If you want to track how your team has done over the decades, your next step should be to look up a "Draft Value Chart." It’s a tool used to see if a team actually got "value" for their picks or if they've been lighting assets on fire for years. Comparing your team's draft history against their actual win-loss record over a ten-year span usually tells a very clear story about why they are—or aren't—winning Cups.