Amateur Drafts
The NHL Amateur Draft was instituted in 1963 in order to break the existing NHL teams' monopoly on junior players, which they had gained by the NHL Sponsorship System. Prior to the Amateur draft players were claimed by NHL teams based on the junior teams they played for. If an NHL team sponsored a junior team and a player was on that team, their rights belonged to the NHL team and the player could not play for any NHL team except the sponsor.
However, the first few years of the NHL draft were still affected by the sponsorship system since sponsored players were not eligible to be drafted. It was not until the 1969 draft that all remnant effects of the sponsorship system were eliminated.