We’re just about hitting the true midpoint of the Community Draft Board, and next up, we’re welcoming into the mix defenseman Xavier Villeneuve.
A name that might be familiar to some of the prospect watchers around here, Villeneuve just wrapped up his third season in the QMJHL with Blainville-Boisbriand, where he was teammates with Flyers 2024 second-round pick Spencer Gill. Villeneuve put up a productive — if somewhat uneven — draft season, and has made a lot of fans for himself off of his offensive production, but questions about his defensive ceiling have left him falling on some of the major rankings. The lack of consensus makes for an interesting case, in all, and one that might just be intriguing enough for the Flyers to take a shot on.
Pre-draft rankings
Ranked #13 by Elite Prospects
Ranked #22 by The Athletic (Scott Wheeler)
Ranked #31 by Sportsnet (Jason Bukala)
Ranked #29 by Daily Faceoff
Statistics
What’s there to like?
In Villeneuve, we have a really interesting versatile defender.
He’s incredibly smart on-puck, making good reads under pressure and playing off of checking coverage to make high-end plays happen. He’s really comfortable as a distributor, can find lanes quickly and hit his teammates with seam passes effectively and with pace. It is worth acknowledging right off the top that his game was a little uneven this season — a line of demarcation with his midseason lower-body injury so stark that we wonder if there was a bit of injury still lingering after his return — and he did lean a little heavily on playing a pass-first game on the other side of it, which was still effective, but he really is able to hit another level in his game when he’s leaning more into the skate-first style which made him so effective to begin with.
Villeneuve is really stellar on his feet, and some would argue just as much as any other defender in this draft class. He’s explosive in his stride, getting himself up to top speed quickly, and flexes an ability to maintain that speed in moving up-ice and, critically, still make plays when moving as quickly as he does. He can play a distributor role, to be sure, and his ability to back up defenders and find lanes to set up his teammates is truly dynamic, but he also shows a real willingness to attack the scoring areas of the ice and work to get not just shots but quality shots on net in a way that’s somewhat unusual for a defender.
He’s, in all, a really creative offensive player, and shows a real confidence to jump into the play, and while his timing on when to do that hasn’t been completely perfect, he’s been generally good at picking his spots, and got even better as the season went on, which is just about as much as you would hope to see.
On the flip side, his defensive abilities — while also certainly not perfect — are still somewhat underrated given the broader style of game that he plays. his vision here really stands out, his ability to scan for lanes and get himself into the right position to make a play on the puck or guide a puck carrier to the perimeter is really solid, and that presents as one of the more projectable elements of his game.
There is a bit of a sense in him that he may have done all that he can at the QMJHL level, and with that, he heads to BU next season, and that feels like a really interesting and kind of perfect landing spot for him — that team had some real struggles last season, and maybe this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it’s hard not to look at him heading into a program which really helped to bring Lane Hutson’s game (as a similarly undersized, offensive minded, but defensively a bit raw defender) alive and feel optimistic that the right setting to take that next step forward is in front of him.
What’s not to like?
One of the big things — no pun intended– that gets brought up most in terms of less favorable elements of Villeneuve’s profile is, of course, the size. Though he did grow an inch over this past year (up from 5’10 to 5’11) and there’s reason to believe there’s a bit more growth runway there for him, that’s still undeniably undersized for a defenseman. He’s been able to work around any issues that might arise from that for the most part, but there still have been some moments where he just gets outworked by a bigger and stronger player for the puck, and it’s still a work in progress — and will need to be, as he faces even more physically mature players in college next year — for him in building up his physical game, if not learning a bit more sound of a presence
And it’s that defensive game, too, that presents as the shakier side of his game, at times. This isn’t to suggest that he’s a disaster — and we stand by our assertion that his game in his own end is a bit underrated — but it does remain that he can get himself caught scrambling, particularly after trying to do a little too much with the puck, and he also has moments at times where you’d like to see him step up and engage more physically, particularly on the boards. There’s good potential here if he can keep his focus and bring all his tools together a little more cohesively, but it’s going to take some coaching to get there.
Outside of that, he does also get knocked down in some rankings due to broader questions about the trajectory of his development. That is, he still put together a good season, but with the weaker second half on the other side of the injury, his season in aggregate didn’t see him take the big step forward that one might have expected to see from a defenseman who produced above a point per game pace in his Draft-1 year. As we said, it’s an open question whether some of this was driven by lingering effects from the injury, but it still makes for some risk in picking him higher — is this a player who can bounce back and hit the ground running in his next season when he’s fully healthy, or is this a guy who peaked early and is now beginning to plateau?
How would he fit in the Flyers’ system?
On the most basic level, there is a bit of a degree of size redundancy at work here, if Villeneuve were to be injected into the pipeline. We’ve talked a bit about this already, that the Flyers already do have a handful of undersized defensemen in the mix at the NHL level and are seeming to have a bit of trouble finding places in the lineup for all of them, so there will be some maneuvering needed there, if more than a couple of these pieces have longer term futures in the organization, and that can be its own challenge.
That said, one of the Flyers’ most pressing needs as they continue to build through the draft is to find another high-end defenseman to help them build something more stable and productive on their power play. And while there are some holes in his game, and there will need to be some real work done by the development staff to polish out some of the engagement and decision making hiccups he deals with, what he can do offensively might just be worth that tradeoff for them. After all, their staff has done some very good work with their defense prospects in the AHL already, and could be perfectly positioned to work with a player like Villeneuve. It might be a bit of a swing, but the Flyers have shown that they haven’t been afraid of taking those up to this point.
Could the Flyers actually get him?
As has been the case with a number of these prospects that we’ve covered over the last handful of days, the rankings for Villeneuve are all over the place. There’s a chance that enough teams will have cooled on him because of some combination of his defensive weaker points and his cooler second half to the point where he drops all the way into the 20s for the Flyers to grab, should they so choose, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another team picking up in the teens feel inspired enough by his offensive capabilities to take a shot on that upside. So, it’s a real possibility that he will be a legitimate option for the Flyers, but it’s far from a certainty.
What scouts are saying
“Villeneuve is a September 2007 who was a couple of weeks away from being eligible for the 2025 draft and is playing his third season in the QMJHL pre-draft. He was the QMJHL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year at 16 and the QMJHL Defenseman of the Year and a CHL Third Team All-Star at 17, finishing first among Q defensemen in assists (50) and second in points (62) on top of playing to above a point per game and logging 20 minutes per game. He was also a top playmaker in the league, period. He looked dynamic on the puck at U18 worlds as well, running Canada’s top power play (including double duty on both units at times) and creating with his feet off the line to score four goals, most in the tournament by a D (though he was deployed in a sheltered offensive role). This season, he continued to make plays at a high rate, was playing above a point per game, and led all D in shots on goal before an injury shut him down in early January, after his production had regressed a little following a hot start. He returned in time for the playoffs and was up and down for me in recent viewings. He didn’t meet my expectations this season on the whole, even factoring in the time lost. Outside of his obvious talent in Q action, I also thought his QMJHL Prospects game and CHL USA Prospects Challenge performances were a bit of a mixed bag. He was busy and noticeable on the puck in both (with some high-end flashes in the CHL-USA series in particular), and played with a chip on his shoulder when targeted physically, showing that he wasn’t going to back down, but was also scrambly and careless at times.
And though he’s small and still physically immature, his dad is a big guy, and there is some hope that Villeneuve is going to grow at least a little. He has already moved his listing from 5-10 to 5-11, which, fairly or unfairly, is important. His skill level, offensive hockey sense and puck play are all legitimately elite. He’s constantly making plays and finding openings. And while he’s more shifty than fast (he has mastered using his head, shoulders and eyes to be deceptive and shake past opponents), his speed has improved, he opens up a lot of space for himself on the ice, and he defends smartly for his size, using his edges and a combination of IQ and instincts. It’s his shimmies over his breezy feet that really grab you, though. He beats and loses players effortlessly and plays the game with incredible poise and dimension. He has phenomenal edges, a quick release and a good stick. He’s a high-end talent, and a year after no sub-6-feet D were drafted, I’ll be fascinated to see where he lands on draft day because there are teams that don’t like him and the combination of his size, the Q and the mistakes he makes. He does have a unique skill set, though, and his ability to break ankles will translate.”
-Scott Wheeler (The Athletic)
“Just because Villeneuve will go lower due to his smaller 5-foot-11 frame doesn’t mean I’ll discount him. Villeneuve was one of the best defensemen at the 2025 U-18 World Championship, helping Canada win gold. He had 62 points last season in the Q and would have surpassed that this year if he hadn’t missed about 25 games due to injury. Villeneuve can drive the play from the point and is as good as anyone in this draft class on the man advantage. I loved him at the CHL USA Prospects Challenge in particular – it felt like he was playing with a boatload of confidence. His play in the Q playoffs has been really promising, too.”
– Steven Ellis (Daily Faceoff)
One player off, another player on. As we hit the midpoint of the series, we welcome Mathis Preston to the poll — a skilled but somewhat divisive winger out of the WHL.
“Preston is a very talented winger. His skating is very good, showing the quick-twitch first step and speed of top NHL forwards. He has excellent hands and can score from range. His playmaking is good, but not great. He’s also a 5-foot-11 winger who plays on the outside too much. On his best shifts, he looks like a top-six winger in the NHL, but he’s inconsistent. His talent probably gets him NHL games, but he’ll need to round out his game to become a legit player.”
– Corey Pronman (The Athletic)
