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1987 NHL entry draft

Player selection draft

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ1061678
Source-derived summary

The 1987 NHL entry draft was the 25th draft for the National Hockey League. It was held at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, and was the first draft held in the United States. The NHL teams selected 252 players eligible for entry into professional ranks, in the reverse order of the 1986–87 NHL season and playoff standings.

The last active player in the NHL from this draft class was Mathieu Schneider, who retired after the 2009–10 season.

Selections by round

Below are listed the selections in the 1987 NHL entry draft. Club teams are located in North America unless otherwise noted.

Round one

Vancouver's first-round pick went to Boston as the result of a trade on June 6, 1986 that sent Barry Pederson to Vancouver in exchange for Cam Neely and this pick.

Minnesota's first-round pick went to Los Angeles as the result of a trade on June 13, 1987 that sent Los Angeles' first-round (# 6) and third-round picks in the 1987 Entry Draft in exchange for this pick.

Los Angeles' first-round pick went to Minnesota as the result of a trade on June 13, 1987 that sent Minnesota's first-round (# 4) to Los Angeles in exchange for a third-round pick in the 1987 Entry Draft and this pick.

Washington's first-round pick went to Quebec as the result of a trade on June 13, 1987 that sent Dale Hunter and Clint Malarchuk to Washington in exchange for Gaetan Duchesne, Alan Haworth and this pick.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1987 NHL entry draft” as player selection draft. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around entry, draft and Player.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 1986, 2009—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with entry, draft and Player providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1987 NHL entry draft”, the useful work is to connect “player selection draft” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1061678. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1986 and 2009.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow 1987 NHL entry draft primary sources, 1987 NHL entry draft archive and entry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1987 NHL entry draft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.