William Villeneuve Waivers: Toronto's Quietest Roster Problem

The William Villeneuve waivers problem is the one nobody in Toronto is planning for

The William Villeneuve waivers situation is the least discussed roster question the Maple Leafs face before camp opens on Sept. 17, and it is the one most likely to cost them a player for nothing. Villeneuve is no longer waiver-exempt. If Toronto wants to send him to the Marlies this fall, he has to clear all 31 other clubs first. He is a 24-year-old right-shot defenceman coming off the best postseason any blueliner has had in Toronto Marlies history. Somebody will take him.

This is not a hypothetical. He already passed through waivers unclaimed in October 2025. What has changed since then is everything about how he looks on paper.

What Villeneuve did last season

The regular season was fine. Villeneuve put up three goals and 30 points in 61 games for the Marlies — solid production for an AHL defenceman, not the kind of number that gets a player claimed.

The playoffs were something else. Villeneuve led all AHL defencemen in scoring during the 2026 Calder Cup run and set the Marlies' franchise record for points by a defenceman in a single postseason, passing Connor Carrick's 18 from 2016. Toronto beat the Chicago Wolves in five games to win the Cup. He was, by any reasonable reading, the most important defenceman on a championship team.

Twenty-four-year-old right-shot defencemen who can run a power play and just did that do not sit on the wire. There are rebuilding clubs with worse third pairs than what Villeneuve would give them on a two-way deal, and the acquisition cost is a phone call.

The contract detail that makes this urgent

Toronto re-signed Villeneuve in July to a one-year, two-way deal as a restricted free agent. That contract is exactly what a club signs when it expects a player to spend most of the season in the American Hockey League. It is also one of the 50 standard player contracts Toronto has already committed, and the Leafs are at that ceiling.

So the club is carrying a player it plans to bury, on a roster it cannot expand, in a season where every assignment to the Marlies runs through waivers. That is a structural trap, not bad luck.

Where he fits, and where he does not

Toronto's blue line is crowded and expensive. Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Darren Raddysh, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Troy Stecher are all established NHL defencemen. Emil Andrae arrived in the Joseph Woll trade with 107 NHL games already played and a clear organizational mandate to be part of the answer. That is seven bodies for six spots before anyone gets hurt, which is why we flagged the blue-line waiver crunch as a camp storyline two weeks ago.

Villeneuve is behind all of them on the depth chart on Sept. 9. He is also probably the eighth-best defenceman in an organization that will need eight defencemen before American Thanksgiving. Tanev is 36 and played 11 games last season. Rielly has been the subject of trade speculation all summer. Ekman-Larsson turns 35 in July.

That is the argument for keeping him, and it is a real one. It is not an argument Toronto can act on without cost.

The three options, and what each costs

There is no clean answer here, which is why it has gone largely unaddressed.

Carry him on the NHL roster. This is the safe play and the expensive one. Toronto opens camp above the $104-million upper limit and expects to reach compliance through long-term injured reserve. Every roster spot the Leafs use on a healthy scratch is a spot they cannot use on a forward, and an eighth defenceman who plays 20 games is a poor use of scarce cap room. It also stalls the development of a player who needs minutes.

Waive him and hope. Twenty-eight teams passed on him last October. That was before the Calder Cup run. Betting on the same outcome after a franchise-record postseason is the kind of assumption that gets a general manager quoted in a retrospective piece three years later. Cheap right-shot defencemen with recent evidence of production are exactly what bad teams claim.

Trade him. This is the honest option and the one John Chayka should be exploring right now. Villeneuve has more value to a club with a genuine opening than he does as Toronto's eighth defenceman, and a mid-round pick is worth more than a waiver claim, which returns nothing. The Leafs also need to shed a contract to get under the 50-contract ceiling anyway, as we laid out when Toronto hit the limit with the Brendan Brisson signing.

What LeafsLurker would do

Trade him, and do it before the exhibition schedule ends.

The romantic case for keeping Villeneuve is that he earned it — that a player who carries a Calder Cup team deserves the chance to fail at the NHL level with the organization that drafted and developed him. That case is emotionally correct and practically useless. Toronto's blue line is built for the next two seasons, not the next five, and Villeneuve is 24 with no realistic path to a top-six role on this roster before he is 26.

The counterargument is injury depth, and it is a good one until you price it. Carrying a defenceman as insurance costs a contract slot, a roster spot and cap space Toronto does not have. Losing him on waivers costs all of that plus the asset. Trading him converts a player Toronto cannot use into something it can, and does it while the market still remembers what he did in June.

Chayka has been decisive all summer. Woll and Simon Benoit to Philadelphia, Brandon Carlo to St. Louis, Dennis Hildeby to Tampa Bay — he has consistently moved players before their value could soften. This is the same kind of decision, at a smaller scale, with a deadline attached.

How NHL waivers actually work, and why the odds changed

The mechanics matter here, because the risk is often described loosely.

When a club places a player on waivers, every other team has a window to submit a claim. If more than one team claims, priority goes to the club with the worse record. The claiming team takes on the contract as it is written — in Villeneuve's case a one-year, two-way deal at a modest number — and gives up nothing. There is no compensation. The player simply leaves.

That structure is why the risk scales with how cheap and how useful a player looks. An expensive veteran on a long-term deal is safe on waivers because nobody wants the contract. A 24-year-old defenceman on a one-year, two-way deal is the opposite: essentially free, with a full season of team control and no downside if he does not work out.

Villeneuve cleared in October 2025 because 31 clubs looked at an AHL defenceman with modest production and decided he was not worth a roster spot. Since then he has led all AHL defencemen in playoff scoring, set a franchise postseason record and won a championship. The scouting departments that passed a year ago have seen that. Teams do not usually get the same answer twice when the evidence changes.

The precedent Toronto should remember

The Maple Leafs have watched useful depth walk out the door on the wire before, and it never looks like a big loss on the day it happens. It looks like a big loss in January, when a defenceman goes down and the club is dressing somebody who was not supposed to play NHL games.

That is the real cost of a waiver loss and it is why the trade option is not merely tidier accounting. Moving Villeneuve for a pick means Toronto chooses the timing, sets a price and gets something back. Waiving him means another organization chooses, and Toronto finds out at noon.

What's next

Camp opens Sept. 17, Toronto plays four exhibition games between Sept. 19 and Sept. 23, and final cuts land before opening night against Montreal on Sept. 29. Villeneuve will be in a preseason lineup and other teams will be watching, which is either an audition or an advertisement depending on how Chayka handles it.

Watch the pairings in the split-squad games. If Villeneuve is playing on the right side with a legitimate partner, Toronto is showcasing him. If he is buried on a third pairing in the games the veterans skip, the club has already decided he clears. Track the full defence group on our players page.