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<\/p>\nAlexandre Jacques\u2019 first season as head coach of the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada was just getting started, and he\u2019d decided to bring in a few of the team\u2019s alumni for a practice.<\/p>\n
Among them were former NHLers Joel Teasdale (at the time playing in Austria), 27, and Philippe Maillet (at the time playing in Switzerland), 33.<\/p>\n
The two veteran pros couldn\u2019t get the puck off one current player: Xavier Villeneuve.<\/p>\n
When Jacques tells that story months later, he refers to it as \u201cjust one example\u201d of the kind of first impression Villeneuve can leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that he\u2019s got a special gift,\u201d Jacques said. \u201cHe\u2019s really dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n
That dynamic player, however, is also described by NHL scouts as one of the 2026 NHL Draft\u2019s most polarizing prospects.<\/p>\n
The one pole: He was named to the CHL\u2019s All-Rookie Team in 2023-24 after he registered 43 points in 54 games as a young 16-year-old in the Q (his late-September birthday makes him old for this year\u2019s draft but made him one of the league\u2019s youngest players that year) and the QMJHL\u2019s Defenceman of the Year in 2024-25 after he registered 62 points in 61 games. He won a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2025 U18 worlds, where he led all D in the tournament with four goals. To start his draft year, he registered 22 points in his first 14 games of this season and was one of the first three players named to Team CHL\u2019s roster for the CHL USA Prospects Challenge. There, he was also named an alternate captain.<\/p>\n
The other pole: He\u2019s a 5-foot-10.75, 164-pound D who draws criticism from scouts for how hard he defends. He also dealt with hip issues this season, which he told The Athletic aren\u2019t major and were \u201cnothing that anybody would operate on,\u201d but that some teams do wonder about and kept him off the ice to start his offseason as he continued his rehab. And he didn\u2019t have the season many expected he would, finishing with 30 points in his final 40 regular-season and playoff games after that hot start and missing all of January, February and most of March due to the injury.<\/p>\n
The former is reason to bet on him in the draft. The latter raises the question of how early it would be prudent to do so.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Xavier Villeneuve on the ice at practice before the CHL USA Prospects Challenge. (Jenn Pierce \/ CHL)<\/p>\n
Maxim Noreau, himself an undersized offensive defenseman, began working with Villeneuve after he retired from his 17-year career spanning the NHL, AHL and Swiss NL, and was hired as a skills coach for the Armada just as Villeneuve was coming into the league as their first-round pick (No. 7 overall) in the 2023 QMJHL draft.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve worked together for three years now, both in season in his once-a-week role with the Armada and in the offseason through weekly skates he started running for him after meeting his dad and the work he does with Villeneuve\u2019s agency, Quartexx, in the Montreal area, often skating him with his pro guys. He\u2019ll also send him video and notes over the course of the season.<\/p>\n
The first time he got on the ice with him in Blainville, though, he had never heard of Villeneuve.<\/p>\n
In one of the very first drills he ran the players through, Villeneuve did it his own way. Then he watched him go through the circuit again and do it another way.<\/p>\n
At the time, Noreau didn\u2019t know how he felt about it. Years later, he told people with Hockey Canada about it, and they said WHL exceptional-status D Landon DuPont was like that at one of their camps, too: a drill changer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI joke around with him a lot that I can\u2019t even use some of the drills I use because he\u2019s not even doing the drill the way I want it, but it\u2019s hard to get mad at him because he\u2019s doing it so well,\u201d Noreau said.<\/p>\n
Noreau has simply tried to help him as much as possible with balance.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike with any young player, it\u2019s going to be a learning curve. But the high-end skill is undeniable. The best way I can describe it, if we\u2019re just going to talk about the pure skill or creativity, is that it\u2019s what we see in a Hutson or a Hughes,\u201d Noreau said. \u201cAnd not that I\u2019m comparing him to them \u2014 they\u2019re on another planet and if he wants to get there he\u2019s got a lot of work to do \u2014 but let\u2019s just say that he has the opportunity because of just how creative he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacques describes Villeneuve\u2019s draft year in three parts. There was the first month and a half where he was \u201creally good.\u201d There was the time between the QMJHL top prospects game and the injury, when he felt he tried to do too much. And then there was the end of the regular season and into the playoffs, where he started to find that balance again, but was also working his way back from injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to be a difference-maker for our team, and he has that at his heart and for him to be a difference-maker was offensively,\u201d Jacques said. \u201cBut when he\u2019s going to get to the next level \u2014 and I know he\u2019s going to mature and understand it \u2014 and you\u2019re playing against the best players in the world, it\u2019s not going to happen every shift that you do a highlight play and what\u2019s most important is to defend and then the offense is going to come no matter what with the skill he\u2019s got.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noreau said there were times a year ago when Villeneuve would get down on himself when another guy was put out first on the power play or late in a game, not because he was a bad teammate (all those The Athletic spoke to for this story praised his enthusiasm for hockey, his teammates and life) but because he\u2019d think \u201cMan, I want to get out there, I\u2019m supposed to be the guy.\u201d This year, his short-term memory took a \u201cbig step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noreau thinks both the comparisons to the Hutsons and the critics who don\u2019t think he\u2019ll be them will drive him, too.<\/p>\n
\u201c(They\u2019re) hard to live up to, but he knows he has a lot of work to do,\u201d Noreau said. \u201cAnd defensively, especially when you\u2019re that size, it\u2019s always going to be the knock on you, but there\u2019s ways to defend at that size against bigger guys, especially when you\u2019re as creative as he is. You see these Hutsons now, and they\u2019re getting away with it just by having great feet and great sticks or even being able to recover if you do get beat. The upside, especially offensively, is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Xavier Villeneuve skates around two defenders. (Blainville-Boisbriand Armada \/ QMJHL)<\/p>\n
Talk to Villeneuve, and he speaks with excitement and confidence.<\/p>\n
He sees himself as a defenseman who has \u201cthe skills and the skating to be great offensively.\u201d But he also says \u201cthe compete level is there too\u201d and believes he can \u201calso be great defensively.\u201d His competitiveness drives him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I\u2019m on the ice, I want to be a game-changer, I want to make the difference. That\u2019s a big part of my identity on the ice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ask him about where he comes from, and he\u2019ll eagerly tell you he was raised in Rimouski and moved at 8 to the Montreal borough of LaSalle. His dad, Alexandre, is a marketing director at Pepsi who still plays beer league (Villeneuve has been known to play in those games from time to time). His older brother, Charles-Olivier, is a forward at Concordia University. Growing up, they would go at it on the outdoor rink and in the basement.<\/p>\n
And Villeneuve is quick to point out that his dad is tall, so he thinks he has an inch or two coming as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people can say this, but my dad grew at 19 years old from 5-11 to 6-2, so I\u2019m not worried about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not shy to make the Hutson comparable, either. Though he didn\u2019t grow up a Canadiens fan (Villeneuve was a Bruins fan), he\u2019s a Lane fan and has watched him closely in Montreal. The Hutsons were the driving force behind his decision to commit to Boston University for next season. (Though he was sold when, on a winter recruiting trip, the Terriers\u2019 staff ended up in a ditch, pulled themselves out, and kept on their way to see him.)<\/p>\n
He also knows he can be even better, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was decent. Not really good but not atrocious,\u201d he said of his draft year. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think that I\u2019ve reached my game yet that I had at the start of the year. I\u2019m pretty confident that next year I\u2019ll come back to 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terriers head coach Jay Pandolfo and his coaching staff are excited about the opportunity to help him reach that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe reminds me a lot of guys we\u2019ve had here the last couple of years, one being in Montreal and one now in Washington,\u201d Pandolfo said on a recent phone call, chuckling. \u201cHe\u2019s got a lot of offensive tools. He can really skate. He\u2019s creative. His hockey IQ is very high. His competitiveness is very high. He\u2019s got quite the package.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Pandolfo and Kim Brandvold, who runs BU\u2019s defense, felt in particular that his competitiveness and passion for the game were similar to the Hutsons and both things that actually separate Villeneuve.<\/p>\n
Pandolfo thinks he\u2019ll bring some life to their group off the ice and some creativity to their group on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Lane, it took guys a little bit of time to get used to playing with him and have an understanding that you have to be ready all the time because he sees things that you don\u2019t and maybe you don\u2019t realize that you\u2019re in a good spot for him. So, guys are going to have to adapt to Xavier, too, but a lot of times those players make people around them better, and I think Xavier has that ability,\u201d Pandolfo said.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re confident he\u2019ll get stronger working with their strength and conditioning team as well. And that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean just adding a bunch of weight, either. The still-light Hutsons didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think Lane put on a ton of size. But he\u2019s hockey strong,\u201d Pandolfo said. \u201cAnd I see the same things with Xavier. Their balance they have on the ice, their understanding of leverage and all of those things, I think Xavier already has some of that, but he can also take advantage of the time he\u2019s going to have to work off of the ice. And you have to use your brain, use your angles, use your stick, and those are some of the things that Lane got really good at defensively in his two years here, and we\u2019ll work on similar things with Xavier. But I don\u2019t see major issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Villeneuve didn\u2019t participate in the agility testing or the 10-metre sprint at the NHL Scouting Combine as he nurses his hips back to full health, he finished fourth in horizontal jump (115 inches), second in VO2max output, and tied for 10th in vertical jump (21.9 inches).<\/p>\n
None of that came as any surprise to those who know him.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if he does something wild and people are like \u2018wow, that\u2019s amazing,\u2019 I\u2019m like \u2018No, I\u2019ve seen that 50 times.\u2019 You just need that confidence and that swag to actually go out and try it, which he has,\u201d Noreau said.<\/p>\n
\u2014 With reporting in Buffalo, N.Y., and Calgary and Lethbridge, Alberta<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandre Jacques\u2019 first season as head coach of the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada was just getting started, and he\u2019d decided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-750713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}