NHL Entry Draft

The NHL Entry Draft (French: Repêchage d'entrée dans la LNH) 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 the 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. Up to 1994, the order was solely determined by the standings at the end of the regular season. In 1995, the NHL Draft Lottery was introduced where only teams who had missed the playoffs could participate. The one lottery winner would move up the draft order a maximum of four places, meaning only the top five-placed teams could potentially pick first in the draft, and no team in the non-playoff group could move down more than one place. The chances of winning the lottery were weighted towards the teams at the bottom of the regular season standings. Beginning in 2013, the limit of moving up a maximum of four places in the draft order was eliminated, so the lottery winner would automatically receive the first overall pick, and any teams above it in the draft order would still move down one spot.

Draft (sports)

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, sometimes with a "lottery" factor to discourage teams from purposely losing.

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.

National Hockey League

The National Hockey League (NHL; French: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH) is a professional ice hockey league composed of 30 member clubs: 23 in the United States and 7 in Canada. Headquartered in New York City, the NHL is considered to be the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, and one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season.

The National Hockey League was organized on November 26, 1917, in Montreal, Quebec, after the suspension of operations of its predecessor organization, the National Hockey Association (NHA), which had been founded in 1909 in Renfrew, Ontario. The NHL immediately took the NHA's place as one of the leagues that contested for the Stanley Cup in an annual interleague competition before a series of league mergers and folds left the NHL as the only league left competing for the Stanley Cup in 1926. The NHL started with four teams (all based in Canada) and, through a series of expansions, contractions and relocations, is now composed of 30 active franchises. The "nation" referred to by the league's name was Canada, although the league has now been binational since 1924 when its first team in the United States, the Boston Bruins, began play. After a labour-management dispute that led to the cancellation of the entire 2004–05 season, the league resumed play under a new collective agreement that included a salary cap. In 2009, the NHL enjoyed record highs in terms of sponsorships, attendance, and television audiences.

Draft

Draft or draught may mean:

Watercraft dimensions

Selection processes

Entertainment

2017 NHL Entry Draft

The 2017 NHL Entry Draft will be the 55th NHL Entry Draft. The draft will be held on June 23–24 2017, at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Eligibility

Ice hockey players born between January 1, 1997, and September 15, 1999, are eligible for selection in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. Additionally, un-drafted, non-North American players born in 1996 are eligible for the draft; and those players who were drafted in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, but not signed by an NHL team and who were born after June 30, 1997, are also eligible to re-enter the draft.

Traded picks

The order of the 2017 Entry Draft will be finalized upon the conclusion of the 2016–17 NHL season. However, some teams have already exchanged picks for this draft via trade. These picks are listed below.

Round one

No traded picks for this round

Round two