{"id":790225,"date":"2026-07-09T09:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/790225\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T09:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:39:11","slug":"maple-leafs-re-sign-william-villeneuve-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/790225\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs Re-Sign William Villeneuve \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to confirming new deals for forwards <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/q\/quillja01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jacob Quillan<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/t\/tverbry01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ryan Tverberg<\/a>, the Toronto Maple Leafs also announced another re-signing. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MapleLeafs\/status\/2074950470217425002\" rel=\"nofollow\">According to a team announcement<\/a>, the Maple Leafs have re-signed defenseman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/v\/villewi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">William Villeneuve<\/a> to a two-year contract.<\/p>\n<p>Villeneuve, 24, has been a staple on the blue line for the AHL\u2019s Toronto Marlies for the last several years. Toronto drafted him with the 122nd overall pick of the 2020 NHL Draft from the QMJHL\u2019s Saint John Sea Dogs.<\/p>\n<p>He remained fairly stagnant in his development when he became a full-time player for the Marlies in the 2022-23 campaign. Villeneuve scored three goals and 25 points in 54 games in his rookie campaign, and two goals and 25 points in 54 games in his sophomore season.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, Villeneuve took a big step forward during the 2024-25 season. In his best regular season to date, Villeneuve registered four goals and 40 points in 55 games with a +17 rating. It was such a good season that the Maple Leafs afforded Villeneuve his NHL debut, going scoreless across three contests.<\/p>\n<p>Although his 2025-26 regular season wasn\u2019t as good, scoring three goals and 30 points in 61 games, Villeneuve came alive in the postseason. Helping the Marlies to a Calder Cup championship, Villeneuve scored two goals and 23 points in 24 games with a +3 rating. He was only three points behind teammate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/lettivi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Vinni Lettieri<\/a> for the most points in the Calder Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Villeneuve, unless more changes are on the horizon, it\u2019s unlikely that he\u2019ll have a spot on the Maple Leafs\u2019 roster to begin the 2026-27 season after the team brought in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/a\/andraem01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Emil Andrae<\/a> and re-signed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/stechtr01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-07-08_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Troy Stecher<\/a>. Still, given his performance over the last few seasons, it wouldn\u2019t be surprising to see Villeneuve get the call if the Maple Leafs run into injury trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In addition to confirming new deals for forwards Jacob Quillan and Ryan Tverberg, the Toronto Maple Leafs also&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82,746,4584,128980],"class_list":["post-790225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-transactions","tag-william-villeneuve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}