Wallstedt on a Top-10 List Is Nice. The Five Guys Still Out Are the Story.

Jesper Wallstedt made NHL Network's top-10 goalies list this week, which is a good thing to note and then set aside. The more pressing goaltending news in Minnesota remains Filip Gustavsson, who is still out, with no timeline, same as he was when I wrote about this eight days ago and eight days before that.

The full cluster hasn't moved: Gustavsson, Jonas Brodin, Zach Bogosian, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Charlie Stramel, all still out as of this week. That's your starting goalie, two defensemen, a shutdown center who logged nearly 20 minutes a night last season, and a young blue-liner the organization was counting on to develop. Nicolas Aube-Kubel signing with Dinamo Minsk on Sunday is a footnote by comparison, but it's one more body gone from a depth chart that was already thin before any of this started.

Guerin has been busy — MacKinnon in the front office, Coleman and Maatta acquired from Calgary, the tall goalie prospect signed to an entry-level deal. The organizational infrastructure work is real. But none of it answers the basic question that has been sitting here since late June: when do these five come back, and will any of them be ready when camp opens? That's still unanswered.