The Wild aren’t committing to it, but Jesper Wallstedt appears to be in line to make his NHL debut this week.

“I think it’s to be determined,” head coach John Hynes said Monday.

“You never know,” Wallstedt added an optional morning skate. “Taking it day by day, and we’ll see how it goes.”

Wallstedt, the 20th overall pick in the 2021 entry draft, is 3-0-0 in NHL preseason games — two in 2022, one this fall — but has yet to play a regular-season game. At Iowa, he’s 11-7-2 with a 2.54 goals-against average and .917 save percentage.

He would have been here immediately after the Wild lost Filip Gustavsson to a lower body injury Dec. 30 at Winnipeg, but Wallstedt was dealing with his own injury and hadn’t played since Dec. 20. It was bad timing.

“Obviously I, of course, want to get there,” he said. “But now I’ve just got to take care of myself, and we took it easy with my injury and made sure it was 100 percent before I got the call to come up here.”

Activated last Friday, Wallstedt, 21, made back-to-back starts at Iowa — two 4-1 losses — before the Wild called him up on Sunday.

“Getting off injury, he played two games in Iowa,” Hynes said. “Now he’s here. I think we’ll just play it day-to-day.”

With Gustavsson slowly recovering, it’s all but certain Wallstedt will make his NHL debut this week. Marc-Andre Fleury was set to make his sixth straight start on Monday against the Dallas Stars with a chance to pass Patrick Roy (551) on the career wins list. Win or lose, it’s not hard to see Wallstedt getting Wednesday’s start in Dallas.

If not, he would certainly play one of Friday-Saturday back-to-backs against Philadelphia and Arizona at Xcel Energy Center.

“Of course you can see a smile on my face,” Wallstedt said. “I’m happy that I’m here and we’ll see if the opportunity comes. I’ll try to give it my best shot if it happens. Otherwise, we’ll just get better by every day.”

Bad timing II

Marcus Foligno was set to return to the lineup after missing three days with a lower body injury.

It was bad timing for the Wild, already playing through injuries to players such as Kirill Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon and Mats Zuccarello, who returned on Saturday from a nine-game absence (broken arm).

Foligno wasn’t on the ice for the Wild’s 4-3 overtime victory at Columbus on Saturday, which gave Fleury his 551st career victory. He now trails only Martin Brodeur (691) on the NHL career list.

Foligno attended Saturday’s home opener for Minnesota’s new PWHL team at the X with his daughters, then watched the Wild game on TV.

“It was really cool to see, and I think you just saw the excitement that I’ve missed being a part of,” he said. “You saw the guys flood to Flower, that’s what’s special about it.”

Injury updates

The Wild still have five players on injured reserve, but Hynes said Monday that Gustavsson, Kaprizov (back) and Brodin (arm) have “all now moved on to the on-ice portion of their recovery.”

“I don’t have a timeline on it, but they are on the ice (and) skating,” the coach said. “That’s kind of the next phase. When you’re in that phase (it’s) similar to just what’s the next progression? Is it practice? Is it ready to play? Is it contact? But they’re all skating and progressing.”

Asked if it were possible any of those players would return this week, Hynes said it was unlikely.

Briefly

Rookie defenseman Daemon Hunt was in the lineup in place of Alex Goligoski and played the point on the second power play unit. … To make room on the roster for Foligno, the Wild reassigned forward Jake Lucchini to Iowa.