The Toronto Maple Leafs added to their 2026 college free agent crop last week by signing defenseman Hayes Hundley (University of St. Thomas), who is set to make his AHL debut for the Toronto Marlies against Utica this morning. <\/p>\n
Hundley is the second defenseman that the Leafs<\/a> have signed this cycle, following the acquisition of Northeastern\u2019s Vinny Borgesi. Unlike Borgesi and Brandon Buhr, Hundley comes from the western half of college hockey over at St. Thomas. Hundley is listed at 6\u20192 and 207 lbs., which gives him a significant size advantage over the diminutive Borgesi, although his track record at higher levels of hockey is much more limited.<\/p>\n Born in December 2005, Hundley hails from Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He played through his high school years with the Ohio Blue Jackets program, rising to the U18 team during the 2022-23 season, when Hundley was 17. This trajectory differs slightly from that of most players who reach this level, who typically join a junior league in their later high school years.<\/p>\n Hundley made it to that stage after 2022-23, jumping to the Johnston Tomahawks of the North American Hockey League. The NAHL is several rungs down the ladder from college hockey, but it was a way for Hundley to get his feet wet against real competition not found in the local rinks of central Ohio. Hundley wasn\u2019t a high scorer on Johnston, collecting three goals and 11 points in 53 games, although that was third on the team in scoring. Johnston, a mediocre squad, lost its first-round playoff series, and Hundley\u2019s time in the NAHL came to an end.<\/p>\n From there, Hundley leveled up one rung on the ladder. For the 2024-25 season, his age-19 campaign, Hundley played with the Fargo Force of the USHL. Playing in the USHL is the most common way to prepare for the rigors of college hockey; it\u2019s very common to see a player get a year of seasoning there. Hundley\u2019s offensive production didn\u2019t change much, registering a 4-12-16 stat line in 58 games, which placed him fifth on the team in defense scoring.<\/p>\n If there is one interesting thing to note about Hundley\u2019s season in the USHL, it\u2019s that his PIMs jumped from 24 in the NAHL to 74 in the USHL, suggesting he leaned into using his frame a bit more and played with more fire or edge. Scouting on Hundley is fairly limited as a whole, but there is a scouting report from Elite Prospects\u2019 Mitch Brown filed during Hundley\u2019s time in Fargo<\/a>. The first lines validate the intuition surrounding Hundley\u2019s PIM total:<\/p>\n Fargo\u2019s best player in this game, Hundley brought a lot of exciting elements. First, the physicality. He was constantly looking for contact, whether he was lining up opponents for big hits, setting picks, or engaging early going to the wall to secure inside position.<\/p>\n Brown remarked that Hundley participated in Fargo\u2019s offensive system: joining the rush, trying to generate offense from the point, and even scoring a goal in the game. He showed some manipulation with the puck but also forced plays and struggled under pressure from the opposition, but Brown\u2019s conclusion was fairly optimistic about Hundley\u2019s upside:<\/p>\n (Hundley) plays a very active, aggressive style with some advanced ideas, but the skill and details will have to take a step to become an NHL prospect. But he should become a top NCAA defenceman in a few years, regardless.<\/p>\n Hundley got to work on that NCAA projection the very next season, as his stay in Fargo was just one year long. The Force, like Johnston in the NAHL, were a middle-tier USHL team and were also quickly eliminated from the postseason, expediting Hundley\u2019s move to the NCAA.<\/p>\n Hundley joined the University of St. Thomas, a school most readers likely are not terribly familiar with. It\u2019s a Catholic university located in Minneapolis, the largest private school in the state (although still <10,000 students), and they only recently got a D1 Hockey team. The Tommies leveled up from D3 to D1 in the 2021-22 season under head coach Enrico Blasi (once a powerhouse coach at Miami OH).<\/p>\n It took a few years for St. Thomas\u2019 program to get off the ground at a D1 level, but by the time Hundley arrived, they had transformed into a respectable squad. The team came one game away from qualifying for the NCAA Tournament in 2024-25, and unfortunately, they suffered the same fate this season with Hundley on the roster. After straddling the NCAA Tournament bubble for much of the season, they needed to defeat Minnesota State in the CCHA Tournament title game, but they lost 4-1 and were the second team out of the tourney.<\/p>\n The CCHA is an okay conference; not a power league like the Hockey East, NCHC, or Big Ten (although St. Thomas plans to join the NCHC next season), with Hundley facing some decent teams and some awful teams in that conference. Non-conference matchups with North Dakota and Providence provided a little bit better sample of what he\u2019ll see in professional hockey. As a freshman, Hundley slid comfortably into St. Thomas\u2019 lineup, scoring six goals and 12 assists, and his 21:09 ATOI mark was the third-most on the defense. He recorded only 12 PIM.<\/p>\n Hundley did not appear in the UDFA rankings like Toronto\u2019s other two signings did, making this one more of a lottery ticket. In speaking with a scout who has seen Hundley play a few times for St. Thomas, he expressed some surprise that Hundley was awarded the contract. He didn\u2019t ever feel wowed by Hundley\u2019s game, but he highlighted the size component and Hundley\u2019s right shot as an asset. It\u2019s hard to imagine the Leafs<\/a> making this signing without planning to see Hundley lean into the size and physicality he showed in Fargo, rather than in his time with St. Thomas.<\/p>\n Every spring, across the NHL, there are UDFA signings who are considered marquee players from a college standpoint. Borgesi was one of these sorts of signings (how could he not be, when hockey savant Keith Pelley is a fan?), as was Luke Haymes from last season. TJ Hughes of Michigan, if he were to land with the Leafs<\/a>, would fall in that category. But not every signing can be so highly touted, and not every player can be a high upside swing. Hundley is an interesting kick at the can on a right-handed defenseman with some size who has shown some willingness to play physically and some ability to score goals.<\/p>\n It is a bit unusual that the Leafs<\/a> have signed him now, because I probably would\u2019ve wanted to see Hundley play another year or two in college, especially with St. Thomas joining the NCHC. Notably, Hundley is still only 20 years old. Comparing him to Borgesi, the Northeastern product is 22 and has played four years in college in a better conference. Hundley hasn\u2019t done enough in just one season to clearly warrant such an early contract in the abstract, so the Leafs<\/a>\u2018 front office must be of firm belief in their ability to develop Hundley\u2019s skills. We\u2019ll see if they\u2019re right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs added to their 2026 college free agent crop last week by signing defenseman Hayes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-547658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","14":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116369990954946497","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547658","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=547658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}