Gabriel Landeskog to miss entire 2023-2024 season
This is news you never wanna see: Gabriel Landeskog, captain of the 2022 Stanley Cup champs, will not be seeing the ice for a while. The longtime veteran is set to miss the entire 2023-2024 season with a cartilage transplant in his knee. The Colorado Avalanche will now face an uphill battle to return to the Stanley Cup Final in 2024. The Avs made the news official earlier today on Twitter:
In his latest season, Landeskog was excellent. However, that’s the issue. He put up 78 points in 51 games for 2021-2022. Even more unfortunate is that he hasn’t played over 54 games in a season since 2018-2019 (COVID can be blamed, however).
The hockey world has been missing him ever since he lifted the Stanley Cup last Summer. He missed all of this season (and the playoffs) following knee surgery and will now be missed for an entire season once again.
Could this be the end? Knee cartilage replacement is no joke. The Avs and Joe Sakic could put his $7 million cap hit to good use while on LTIR.
Avalanche of Woes:
The hits keep coming for the champs. After getting knocked out in shocking fashion to the Kraken in the first round, now this. Nathan MacKinnon‘s monster deal will also be kicking in this summer, and pretty much all of Colorado’s middle six are free agents.
They’ll have money to play around with but not a ton. The sad truth is the Avalanche might be falling back into the fray of the Western Conference. The Oilers and Golden Knights look like the two top dogs right now. Dallas is on the rise, though 2023 may not be their year.
Sometimes, the NHL is cruel. And this is sadly one of those cases. You never wanna see one of the good guys go down. Here’s to hopefully a complete recovery. And if there’s no return to the ice, hats off to an amazing career. You can’t ask for a much better sendoff than raising the Cup.
