{"id":527378,"date":"2026-03-28T11:07:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/527378\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T11:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:07:01","slug":"maple-leafs-sign-6-foot-3-defenseman-who-had-a-bunch-of-teams-show-interest-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/527378\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs sign 6-foot-3 defenseman who had ‘a bunch of teams show interest’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maple Leafs sign 6-foot-3 defenseman who had ‘a bunch of teams show interest’<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> are trying to make the most of the end of a disappointing season.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

They did that on Friday by signing a talented player to a three-year, entry-level contract.<\/p>\n

The new guy? Hayes Hundley.<\/p>\n

Hundley is a 6-foot-3 defenseman who was just playing at St. Thomas (Minnesota) in the NCAA ranks.<\/p>\n

He’ll head to the Toronto Marlies in the AHL for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Alex Ovechkin snaps an unfathomable streak<\/a><\/p>\n

At St. Thomas this season, Hundley had six goals and six assists (12 points) in 38 games.<\/p>\n

The 21-year old made the CCHA All-Rookie Team.<\/p>\n

He came to the college ranks from the USHL, where he appeared in 58 games for the Fargo Force in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis<\/a> wrote this assessment of Hundley on X:<\/p>\n

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“Aggressive blueliner who gives you little to work with. Doesn’t produce much, but he’s physical and reads plays well. Only spent one year in college, but a bunch of teams showed interest.”<\/p>\n

Hundley had more college eligibility left, so his decision to turn pro now likely exhibits some self-confidence as well as belief of NHL teams that Hundley really can turn into a legitimate professional defenseman.<\/p>\n

For the Maple Leafs, they’ll simply hope to see good things out of Hundley with the Marlies the rest of the way this season before proceeding with his development plans.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs sign 6-foot-3 defenseman who had ‘a bunch of teams show interest’ originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[426,5759,60925,5,60926,20,5172,161,4,66,31,1725,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-527378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-alex-ovechkin","9":"tag-disappointing-season","10":"tag-hayes-hundley","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-hundley","13":"tag-maple-leafs","14":"tag-mapleleafs","15":"tag-minnesota","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-toronto","18":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","19":"tag-toronto-marlies","20":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116306486787558228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}