1980 NHL entry draft
player selection draft
The 1980 NHL entry draft was the 18th draft for the National Hockey League. It was held at the Montreal Forum in Montreal. This was the first time that an NHL arena hosted the draft. The NHL teams selected 210 players eligible for entry into professional ranks, in the reverse order of the 1979–80 NHL season and playoff standings. This is the list of those players selected. The minimum draft age was lowered from 19 to 18, but prospective draftees had to be of age by September 15 rather than any date in the relevant birth year.
The hometown Montreal Canadiens used the first selection on Doug Wickenheiser.
The last active players in the NHL from this draft class were Paul Coffey and Larry Murphy, who both retired after the 2000–01 season.
Selections by round
Below are listed the selections in the 1980 NHL entry draft.
Club teams are located in North America unless otherwise noted.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1980 NHL entry draft” is player selection draft. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through entry, draft and player, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “player selection draft” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q681852. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1979 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “1980 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.