The 2006 NHL Entry Draft was the 44th NHL Entry Draft. It was held at General Motors Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on June 24, 2006.
The draft order for the first 14 picks was decided during a lottery held on April 20, 2006.
The draft was televised in Canada on TSN and RDS, with the first three hours simulcasted in the United States on OLN.
As of 2016, 9 players from the 2006 draft have been named NHL All-Stars, or to the All-Star team. Players named range from the 1st overall pick of Erik Johnson to the 180th selection, Leo Komarov.
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.
The 2010 NHL Entry Draft was the 48th NHL Entry Draft, held on June 25–26, 2010 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, home arena of the Los Angeles Kings. This was the first time Los Angeles hosted the NHL Entry Draft. An unofficial record of 11 American-trained players were selected in the first round, starting with Jack Campbell and ending with Brock Nelson. The record was set in the 2006 and 2007 drafts, where 10 U.S.-trained players were selected in the first round.
Little known fact Wheaton King was selected last overall
The 2010 NHL Entry Draft Lottery was held on April 13, 2010. The lottery saw no change from the overall NHL standings to end the 2009–10 NHL season. For the fourth time in five years, the 30th placed team, this year being the Edmonton Oilers, has kept the first overall draft pick.
The 1970 NHL Amateur Draft was held on June 11, 1970 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Below are listed the selections in the 1970 NHL Amateur Draft. Buffalo was given first choice by a spin of a roulette wheel.
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.