September 18 to September 21, 2026

How to read this board. The window is the four completed days from Friday September 18 through Monday September 21. It is four days rather than seven on purpose. The first board ran on a Friday and covered September 11 to 17; this one runs on a Tuesday. Starting on the 18th is what makes the two boards abut with no gap and no double count, and a swallowed day looks exactly like a day nobody played. 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. All thirty eligibility checks were re-run against the league's own player records this morning and all thirty hold. Four of the thirty rows moved and twenty-six held. Two players went up and the two they passed went down, because a rank change is a claim about two players rather than one. A board that reshuffles every week teaches a reader to ignore it.

Three labels on this board mean what they say. NOT ESTABLISHED against a 2026-27 club means no primary this beat can read puts the player on a roster this season. It does not mean he is unattached. HAND-PULLED means a person typed that destination from a named source rather than a feed returning it. Where the window cell says source not read, no source for that league was opened this week, and that is never evidence that a prospect did not play. One thing that is NOT a source, and it looks like one. The league's preseason box score publishes a 61-name scratch list for San Jose, which is not an attendance list: it carries unsigned reserve-list players and men who were playing in Finland that week. It is not used here.

Prospect of the week

Eric Pohlkamp, right-shot defenseman, third on this board. He scored San Jose's first goal of the preseason at 1:37 of the first period at Anaheim on September 20, five on five, from Ethan Cardwell, and it stood as a 1-0 lead for eighty seconds. He played 18:31, fourth of the six defensemen San Jose dressed, and put three shots on goal, which four Sharks reached in that game and nobody beat. The line that earned it is the shot count rather than the goal: three of the twenty-three shots San Jose put on Anaheim's goaltenders came from a 22-year-old defenseman playing his first game against NHL opposition, in a game San Jose lost 6-2.

The board

What moved, and what did not

Two promotions, and four of the thirty rows changed. Eric Pohlkamp goes from fourth to third and Ryan Lin from third to fourth; Axel Landen goes from thirtieth to twenty-ninth and Nate Misskey from twenty-ninth to thirtieth. A rank change is a claim about two players, not one, which is why both halves are printed. And one man who did not move, deliberately. Leo Sahlin Wallenius played 20:57 at Anaheim, second-most of the six defensemen San Jose dressed, and finished at minus three. Five Sharks finished at minus three in that game and nobody was worse. A plus-minus figure from one exhibition is not information and it does not move a twenty-year-old.

Who is not on this board, and why

Ethan Cardwell is off and it is settled. Six NHL games in 2024-25 and seven in 2025-26 is six or more in each of two prior seasons, which is the disqualifying condition. He dressed at Anaheim on September 20 and assisted Pohlkamp's goal, and he is still not Calder-eligible. Igor Chernyshov is off at 28 NHL games in 2025-26, past the 25-game limit, on the club's own training camp roster of September 16. Michael Misa is off at 45 on the same sheet. Just outside: David Klee (North Dakota), Michael Fisher (Cornell), Eli Barnett (New Brunswick) and Yegor Spiridonov, who is 25, plays in Russia's second tier and has never come to North America.

Compiled from

Machine-compiled: the league's own player records for all thirty eligibility checks, all thirty ages and every 2025-26 line; the league's schedule and box score for San Jose at Anaheim on September 20; the league's published San Jose roster for who is on it today; the OHL, WHL and QMJHL league feeds, every 2026-27 roster in all three read in full this morning, plus each club's schedule and its season statistics; the AHL feed for the Barracuda schedule; and the Finnish league's own game files for TPS. Hand-pulled, and named: Keaton Verhoeff at North Dakota, from head coach Dane Jackson to the Bay Area News Group; Ryan Lin at Denver, from Denver's own published roster; Joshua Ravensbergen at Michigan State, from Michigan State's own published roster. Mike Grier's injury disclosures on Quentin Musty and Cam Lund are hand-read from September 17, before this window, reported by Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News and Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now. The NCAA calendar is from College Hockey News, whose September 2026 schedule carries two games in the whole month, both exhibitions, on the 25th and the 26th. Not read this week: the KHL at the player level (its broadcast feed answers with future fixtures only and its own site returns 403), the MHL and the VHL (403), the SHL and the USHL. Photographs: the league's own 2026-27 player images, for the fifteen prospects it holds one of. The other fifteen 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.