Week of September 11 to September 17, 2026

How to read this board. The window is the seven completed days from Friday September 11 through Thursday September 17, and it ends yesterday rather than today so no unplayed day is counted. Membership is Calder eligibility and nothing else: no more than 25 NHL games in any single prior season, not 6 or more in each of any two prior seasons, and under 26. Where a player is playing does not decide whether he is on this board. Every player's NHL games played was checked one by one against the league's own player records today, which is how Ethan Cardwell comes off the June seed list and stays off. This is the first edition, so nobody has moved. The movement column starts next week, and it will mostly read "held," which is what an honest board looks like.

Two labels on this board mean what they say. NOT ESTABLISHED against a 2026-27 club means this beat could not find a primary that puts the player on a roster this season. It does not mean he is unattached. Where the last-seven-days cell says source not read, no source for that league was opened this week. That is never evidence that a prospect did not play.

Prospect of the week

Carson Wetsch, RW, ranked 11th on this board. Two goals, two assists and a fight in San Jose's 8-1 win over Los Angeles on September 12, then two more fights and a game misconduct the following afternoon. He was also the first forward over the boards on every penalty kill across the weekend, alongside Andre Gasseau, and the pair converted one shorthanded chance. The line that earned it is the second one: a 20-year-old winger who put up 72 points in 65 WHL games last season was used as a penalty killer first, and produced anyway.

The board

Ethan Cardwell is off, and the June list's open question is closed. The seed board flagged him as genuinely uncertain at 13 NHL games across two seasons, because the split decides it. The league's own player record gives the split: 6 games in 2024-25 and 7 in 2025-26. Six or more in each of two prior seasons is the disqualifying condition, so he is not Calder-eligible and he does not appear here.

Igor Chernyshov is off and the reason is not close. He played 28 NHL games in 2025-26, past the 25-game limit, and the club's own training camp roster published September 16 carries that figure. He was a Barracuda co-Rookie of the Year and he is not a rookie any more.

Michael Misa is off at 45 NHL games last season, on the same club document.

Andre Gasseau is ON, and he was not on the June seed list. He was acquired from Boston on June 18, has never played an NHL game, is 23, and signed. He is Calder-eligible on every test, he scored twice in the rookie tournament, and leaving him off a top-30 board would be an error of paperwork. His place here is this beat's call and the desk may strike it.

Just outside. David Klee (North Dakota, 24 GP, 6 P), Michael Fisher (Cornell, 33 GP, 8 P), Eli Barnett (New Brunswick, 1 GP) and Yegor Spiridonov, who is 25, plays in Russia's second tier, and has never come to North America.

Compiled from: the NHL's own player and schedule records for every eligibility check and for the 2025-26 lines; the club's published training camp roster of September 16 for the camp group; the OHL, WHL and QMJHL league feeds for junior rosters and schedules; and the Finnish league's own game files for TPS. Hand-read rather than compiled: the two rookie tournament games, which no outlet published a box score for, reported by Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now, Max Miller of Sharks Hockey Digest, Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News and Fear the Fin; and Mike Grier's September 17 injury disclosures, carried by Pashelka and Peng. Not read this week: the KHL, the MHL, the VHL and the SHL. Photographs: the league's own 2026-27 player images, for the ten prospects it actually holds one of. The other twenty carry initials rather than a face, because the league returns an identical grey silhouette for them and a silhouette is an absence, not a photograph.