The 1986 NHL Entry Draft was held on June 21, 1986 at the Montreal Forum in Montreal, Quebec. The National Hockey League (NHL) teams selected 252 players eligible for entry into professional ranks, in the reverse order of the 1985–86 NHL season and playoff standings. This is the list of those players selected.

Below are listed the selections in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft. Club teams are located in North America unless otherwise noted.

Selections by round:

The NHL Entry Draft is an annual meeting in which every franchise of the National Hockey League (NHL) systematically select the rights to available amateur ice hockey players who meet draft eligibility requirements (North American players 18–20 years old and Europeans of all ages entering league for the first time, all others enter league as unrestricted free agents). The NHL Entry Draft is held once every year, generally within two to three months after the conclusion of the previous season. During the draft, teams take turns selecting amateur players from junior, collegiate, or European leagues.

The first draft was held in 1963, and has been held every year since. The NHL Entry Draft was known as the "NHL Amateur Draft" up until 1979. The entry draft has only been a public event since 1980, and a televised event since 1984. The order is determined by the standings at the end of the regular season, but with one team winning the NHL Draft Lottery and moving up 4 picks in the draft order. Teams at the bottom of the regular season standings are more likely to win the lottery.

A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players. When a team selects a player, the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract, and no other team in the league may sign the player.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams or teams in other countries.

An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft.

Other types of drafts include the expansion draft, in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league; and the dispersal draft, in which a league's surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise.

Teppo Kalevi Numminen (born July 3, 1968) is a retired Finnish professional ice hockey defenceman who played in the National Hockey League. He is currently an assistant coach for the Buffalo Sabres.

Numminen started his career with his local team, Tappara, in the SM-liiga. Drafted twenty-ninth overall in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft by the Winnipeg Jets, Numminen moved to North America in 1988 to play for the Jets. He moved with the team as it became the Phoenix Coyotes before the 1996–97 season. He played in the NHL All-Star Game in both 1999 and 2000. After fifteen seasons playing for the Winnipeg/Phoenix organization, Numminen was traded to the Dallas Stars in July, 2003, for Mike Sillinger. Numminen took a break from hockey during the 2004–05 NHL lockout, then signed as a free agent with the Buffalo Sabres.

On November 13, 2006, Numminen played his 1252nd game in the NHL and in the process, set a record for most NHL games played as a European-trained player, surpassing Jari Kurri . At the time of his retirement, Numminen was the last player from the 1986 NHL Entry Draft still playing in the NHL.

Troy Crowder (born May 3, 1968 in Sudbury, Ontario) is a former professional ice hockey right winger who played parts of seven seasons in the National Hockey League with the New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, and Vancouver Canucks from 1987–88 to 1996–97.

Crowder was drafted 108th overall by the Devils in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft. He compiled 433 career penalty minutes in 150 NHL games played. He also scored nine goals and sixteen points.

Crowder has a son that plays AAA hockey in the sudbury area.