Gabriel Landscog He will miss the entire 2023-24 season for the Colorado Avalanche after the forward underwent a cartilage transplant in his right knee Wednesday.
The Avalanche captain missed the Stanley Cup playoffs and all of that season after knee surgery in October. At the time, Landeskog was expected to be sidelined for 12 weeks. He has not played since catching an assist to help Colorado win the Stanley Cup with a 2-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final on June 26.
“I still think I’m going to be okay, ready to go after the summer,” Landeskoog said before the Avalanche defeated the Winnipeg Jets 4-2 on April 13. I realized fairly quickly that things had gone wrong. … I thought I would be able to play the second half of the season. We gave it our best and it didn’t work. Moving forward, we continue to explore options, but I felt like this was the decision I had to make at this point for everyone involved, for my teammates and myself.”
Landeskog also had knee surgery on March 21, 2022. He missed 23 games but returned to help Colorado win the Cup with 22 points (11 goals, 11 assists) and a team-high plus 15 in 20 playoff games. He had quadriceps surgery during the 2020 postseason.
“The timeline goes back to the 2020 bubble,” he said. “Kind of a freak accident going on there. He hadn’t had any knee issues before that. One thing led to the next, and it kind of gradually got worse over the next year. Beginning with [last] The season is starting to bother me on a daily basis. Things got worse and worse until the moment we had our first surgery. At that point, I didn’t really realize the complexity of the injury and how one injury can… obviously make up.”
Landeskog said he was sure he would play again.
“I’m sure of it,” he said. “When? I don’t know. You’re trying to take it one step at a time. It’s no different than going into a new season, basically. Where you start with training camp and you go from there. It’s the same thing. I try not to look too far ahead. But I’m confident, Like I said, we’ll get through this.”
The 30-year-old has 571 points (248 goals, 323 assists) in 738 regular season games, all with Colorado, and 67 points (27 goals, 40 assists) in 69 playoff games.
The Avalanche (50-24-7) lost the first round of the 2023 Western Conference in seven games to the Seattle Kraken.