Gabriel Landeskog’s season never started, but now it’s officially over.
The Avalanche captain will not play in the 2023 NHL playoffs, the team announced Thursday afternoon. Landeskog underwent arthroscopic right knee surgery in October and was initially assessed a 12-week recovery timeline, but the process has been pushed back multiple times.
“Throughout this entire season, it’s felt like the playoffs have always been the one thing that, ‘Well, no matter what, I’m not going to miss that,'” Landeskog told reporters. “Timelines kept getting pushed back, and for a long time we just went away from timelines for that reason. Because it just sets you up for disappointment and frustration. And when you’re consumed by rehab and you’re consumed by an injury, anybody that’s dealt with chronic pain to any degree (can say) it affects you in more ways than just physically.”
Landeskog said the injury is to the cartilage under his right patella. “It very well could linger into next year,” he said, but he’s confident that he will play again. “When? I don’t know.”
He’s unsure what exactly his offseason will look like, but he has gotten off the ice for now. He had started skating individually Feb. 21 after spending a chunk of the season rehabbing out of town.
“As far as moving forward, I’m not entirely sure, to be honest with you,” Landeskog said. “We continue trying to find ways, consult with experts and doctors and is surgery an option? Yeah. We’ll see where we go.”
The injury dates back three years to Sept. 2, 2020, when Landeskog was cut by teammate Cale Makar’s skate during Game 6 of a playoff series against the Dallas Stars. Landeskog missed Game 7 of that series and underwent a minor procedure.
“Kind of a freak accident that happens there. Never had any knee issues before that,” Landeskog said. “One thing led to the next, and it just sort of progressively got worse over that next year.”
At the beginning of the 2021-22 season, Landeskog said the knee started “bugging me on a daily basis.” That culminated in a surgery that was performed March 14, 2022. Landeskog missed the final 23 games of the regular season then returned for the start of the playoffs. He had a fantastic postseason, with 22 goals in 20 games to help lead the Avalanche to its third Stanley Cup championship.
But by the end of the Cup run, he had stopped joining the team for morning skates. Landeskog said playing in the high-intensity playoff games took a toll, “but I don’t regret anything.”
It all eventually led to a third surgery in October 2022 — the arthroscopic surgery that was supposed to keep the captain out until mid-January. There was never a significant setback, Landeskog said, but rehab has been a slow-moving process, and while the nature of the injury doesn’t prevent him from walking around normally, it does affect skating at a rudimentary level.
“I personally might have underestimated the injury itself,” he said.
Landeskog felt like he was making progress until the first two weeks of April, when he started to “plateau” in his sessions with Avalanche skills coach Shawn Allard. That’s when he started to lose confidence that he would be able to return even in the playoffs. He sought advice from a variety of people and had the support of the organization, he said — “but ultimately, it was my decision” to shut himself down for the season.
Landeskog has missed 105 consecutive regular-season games now. He’ll continue seeking medical opinions about whether he needs a fourth surgery this offseason, but for now, the future is murky for the Avalanche captain. He is under contract through 2028-29, his age-36 season. He has an average annual value of $7 million. The $82.5 million NHL salary cap is expected to increase by $1 million next season, but its future beyond 2023-24 is unclear.
“We’re still in a lot of talks in terms of trying to get more information from different doctors on what the next step could be,” Landeskog said. “And what, if a procedure, what that procedure would entail. I think it’s a big decision, so it needs a lot of doing as much homework as I can on different options. But we haven’t gotten to the point yet where I know exactly what that would mean. Nonetheless, I’d like to start progressing, moving forward as fast as I can and as soon as possible. So, we’ll see when that is.”
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