Quick Facts
Date: June 11, 1970
Site: The Queen Elizabeth Hotel
Host City: Montreal
Draft History
The eighth NHL Amateur Draft included two additional teams in Vancouver and Buffalo, bringing the total number of first-round picks to 14. Six of the 14 first-round picks were traded prior to the draft, including all but one of he first-round picks held by the 1967 expansion clubs. The NHL had learned its lesson as to how the Original Six teams were likely to take advantage of more expansion teams, so Vancouver and Buffalo were prohibited from trading their first-round picks. This draft was also notable because it saw the league pay a much greater amount of money to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in order to secure the rights to players -- an acknowledgement that the league truly was dependent on major-junior hockey now that it no longer sponsored individual junior teams.
The Basics
| Eligible For Draft: | Amateur players born between Dec. 28, 1949 (birthdate of the youngest player selected in 1969), and Dec. 31, 1950. |
| Draft Order: | Expansion Buffalo and Vancouver made the first two picks, with Buffalo winning a "wheel of fortune" spin for the first pick on June 9, 1970. The rest of the teams drafted in reverse order of their 1969-70 finish. |
| Irregularities: | The NHL prohibited the Buffalo and Vancouver franchises from trading first picks and insisted that after signing the players, these teams could not trade them for at least three years. There was no set number of rounds. Teams had the right to pass in any round, and the draft continued until all teams were done selecting. Vancouver selected an ineligible player in the eighth round, not realizing the player's correct age. |
| Rotation: | Buffalo, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oakland, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Toronto, St. Louis, Montreal, New York, Detroit, Boston, Chicago. |
| Total Rounds: | Thirteen |
| Cost to Draft: | Each of the drafted players cost an outright fee of $3,000. Teams would pay an additional $3,000 for each player who signed a pro contract for the 1970-71 season. Teams would pay another $4,000 for each player who appeared in an NHL game during the 1970-71 season. As a result, the players who jumped right to the NHL in 1970-71 cost a total of $10,000 each. Teams did not compensate individual junior franchises for their players, instead the league continued the process of paying all draft-related money to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in order to support major junior hockey as a whole. The CAHA was technically responsible for making sure that amateur teams received more money if they were producing more draft picks. |
| Draft Rights: | Team could offer player contract at any time after draft. |
Draft Recap
| No. 1 pick: | Gilbert Perreault (by Buffalo) |
| Reached NHL: | 62 players (54.0 percent) |
| Won Stanley Cup: | 12 players (10.4 percent) |
| Most NHL Games: | Gilbert Perreault (1,191 games) |
| Most Playoff Games: | Billy Smith (132 games) |
| Highest Pick to Miss: | No. 5 (Ray Martyniuk) |
| Lowest Pick to Reach: | No. 111 (Mike Lampman) |
| Players Drafted: | 115 (66 forwards, 36 defense, 12 goalies, 1 n/a) |
| SNAPSHOT '70 | |
| Total Selected: | 115 |
| Forwards: | 67 |
| Defense: | 36 |
| Goaltenders: | 12 |
| Major Junior: | 87 |
| College Players: | 18 |
| Canadian: | 109 |
| Euro-Canadian: | 0 |
| American: | 6 |
| European: | 0 |
| Reached NHL: | 62 |
| Won Stanley Cup: | 12 |
| Hall of Fame: | 3 |
| All-Star Game: | 11 |
| Year-end All-Star: | 4 |
| Olympians: | 2 |
| Picks Traded: | 13 |