1966 NHL Intra-League Draft

The 1966 NHL Intra-League Draft was held June 15 in the ballroom of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. The draft price was $30,000 (US). The four teams that qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs at the end of the 1965-66 season—Black Hawks, Red Wings, Canadiens and Maple Leafs—were permitted to protect 18 skaters and three goaltenders. The fifth place team, the Bruins, were permitted to protect 19 skaters and three goalies, while the last place Rangers were allowed to protect 20 skaters and three goalies. The number of goaltenders allowed to be protected was increased to three from two because of the foreboding expansion in 1967; the NHL had already decided that the number of protected goalies per team in the '67 Expansion Draft would be only one. If they were only allowed to protect two goalies in this intra-league draft then hypothetically a team could lose two of its top three goalies in the span of about a year, which was felt to be too much of a burden.

Overall	Player Chosen	By	From	Player Removed From Protected List	Claim player?
Round 1
1	Orland Kurtenbach	New York Rangers	Toronto Maple Leafs	John Brenneman	claim
	pass	Boston Bruins
2	Al Lebrun	Detroit Red Wings	New York Rangers	Max Mestinsek	claim
3	Don Blackburn	Toronto Maple Leafs	Montreal Canadiens	Wally Boyer	claim
4	Wally Boyer	Chicago Black Hawks	Montreal Canadiens	Al MacNeil	claim
	pass	Montreal Canadiens
Round 2
5	Al MacNeil	New York Rangers	Montreal Canadiens	Mike McMahon	claim
6	Ted Taylor	Detroit Red Wings	Montreal Canadiens	Pat Quinn	claim
Round 3
7	Ray Cullen	Detroit Red Wings	New York Rangers	Bryan Campbell	claim

1966 was the first year that a player dropped from a team's protected list to make room for another could be immediately claimed by the team who had lost a player, without forfeiting their own turn. The teams who exercised this option had to pay the other team the full draft price. As it turned out every team exercised this option and in effect this resulted in no actual cash changing hands in this entire draft; it all evened out in the end. This was changed after expansion to allow the teams who had lost a player to claim the player dropped by the other team for a reduced price (see my post about the 1972 Intra-League Draft).

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NHL Draft Results