The NHL Waiver Draft was an annual draft held by the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1977 to 2003. A reworked version of the NHL Intra-League Draft, the waiver draft was created to help address the league's competitive balances issues and the financial issues some of the expansion teams added in the preceding ten years were undergoing.^[1] It was not held during the 1979–80 and 1991–92 seasons due to the 1979 merger with the World Hockey Association and the 1991 NHL Dispersal and Expansion Drafts, respectively. It was discontinued as a result of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was reached to end the 2004–05 NHL lockout.^[2] Over the course of 25 waiver drafts, 231 selections were made and 240 players total changed teams.

The waiver draft was held within a week of the start of the regular season. A few days prior to the waiver draft each NHL club would be required to turn in a list of players to protect from selection. First-year players were exempt from selection, but in later editions of the waiver draft this exemption was changed to players under a certain number of professional hockey seasons played and below a minimum number of NHL games played.^[1][3]

The order of the waiver draft was the reverse of the previous season's standings, the first round always being limited to non-playoff teams. Once a team claimed an unprotected player from another team, that team would be required to drop a player from their protection list and the other team's choice of compensation would be a cash payment (a sliding scale varying from player to player) or claiming the dropped player.^[1][3]

The number of players a team could lose in the waiver draft was set at three (later two), which would increase by the number of claims made against other teams. By default, team's could only lose a maximum of one goaltender, unless they opted to offer more than one.^[1][3]

The waiver draft concluded when a round was completed with no selections by any team.^[3]

• Waivers (NHL)