Gabe Landeskog is just like you.
He has envisioned that night, too. So many times. The one thing Avalanche fans want, maybe more than any other thing outside of celebrating more championships.
It’s the biggest thing Landeskog has been working toward for nearly three years: the chance to skate out onto the ice at Ball Arena again.
“For a long time, I thought about it a lot — especially early on in the recovery and right after surgery,” Landeskog told The Denver Post. “It just felt like I thought about it every time I closed my eyes.
“It gave me goosebumps every time thinking about it.”
In less than two weeks, it will be 1,000 days since Landeskog last had the chance to do what he loves. To play for the Colorado Avalanche, for his teammates, for the pride he brings to his family and to the city of Denver.
When, or if, he will get to do that again remains as much of a mystery now as it has at any point along this grueling, complicated journey back. How the process is going, or what’s gone into it, has happened mostly out of public view. Updates on Landeskog’s progress have been sparse, and often purposefully vague.
That changes Sunday. The first episode of a five-part docuseries, “A Clean Sheet” will air on TNT and TruTV at 10 a.m. MT. It will be available to stream March 21 on Max.
The series, directed by AJ Oscarson and produced by Fresh Tape Media, will provide an up-close-and-personal look at Landeskog’s attempt to come back from knee cartilage replacement surgery — something no NHL player has successfully done.
There is footage shot by Oscarson from the past two years, plus video from Landeskog’s own “daddy cam,” which gets a fun introduction in the first episode, and other footage mixed in.
“AJ’s been a rock star throughout this whole thing and done a great job,” Landeskog said. “We’ve grown very close throughout the process, because he’s been there through some of the good times, tough times, and all of it in between.
“… At times you probably don’t want the camera in your face, but at the end of the day, I committed to sharing a lot of it. It’s still only a snippet of two years of my life, but we wanted to make sure we had the camera there for some of the key moments. It’s been good.”
The episodes will air weekly, with the final one on April 13. One of the most poignant moments in the first episode is when Melissa Landeskog, Gabe’s wife, says one of the challenges was that for so long, there was so much hard work involved but no winning to celebrate.
A big part of the mental process for Landeskog during his recovery has been journaling, and he reads some of those entries on camera in the series. He also had to find small wins, whether it was being able to walk stairs again or break a sweat on the stationary bike, before bigger ones like getting back on skates.
“Then there were times where it would feel like it was so far to that next win,” Landeskog said. “You’ve got to break it down in incremental parts. Like, can I get through this workout? Yes, you did. Check. That’s a win. Throughout some of the tougher periods, some of the setbacks, especially, it’s like, just get through the day. That’s it.
“That’s really when you’re struggling and you don’t enjoy it is when you’ve had to backtrack weeks or months in some cases. That’s really when it’s been trying times and challenging, but there’s been a lot of good moments too.”
Landeskog played on a deteriorating knee during the 2022 playoffs, and the reward was lifting the Stanley Cup for the team he dreamed of playing for when he was a kid. The stuff of fairytales.
What came next was anything but. He’d already had two procedures done on his knee by the 2022 playoffs. He had another in the fall of 2022, but that one didn’t fix the issues, either.
After missing all of the 2022-23 season, he had the knee cartilage replacement done on May 10, 2023. The Avs announced he would miss the entire 2023-24 regular season.
Landeskog said that the lowest moments came during that first season, early on in what is now a process into its 34th month.
“There’s been a few. I’m not gonna share all the depressing moments,” he said. “That’s when I had the most questions. That’s when I really didn’t know where things were going. That’s when I didn’t even know what the next week looked like.
“… There were some challenging times where you just like, you don’t even know how to get through the next 5-10 minutes. And I don’t know if that’s … I’m not going to throw out any big words or anything, but obviously it’s been challenging mentally at times. So you just lean on your support system for those moments.”
Shortly before having the surgery, and then for a long time after, Landeskog connected about once a month with Lonzo Ball of the Chicago Bulls, who also had the surgery and recently became the first NBA player ever to return from it.
Other NHL players, including Marc Methot, have had the procedure done but weren’t able to get back. Landeskog said he knew Methot had the surgery but wanted to keep his circle small and hadn’t talked to him.
Lots of people who aren’t professional athletes have had the procedure and enjoyed an improved quality of life. Ball said the surgery was a huge success from a life perspective, regardless of whether he played basketball again.
“Yeah, most definitely,” Landeskog said. “There’s still things that I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do. Like, go for a dead sprint down the street with my kids, or full out at the park or whatever. Luckily, I’m not a sprinting athlete, so I don’t have to do that part. But like, walking stairs was excruciating, pre-surgery. Now? I walk stairs, no problem. Or just, bending down to pick up my kids, or bending down, sitting on the floor, and playing with my kids.
“Those are things that are like step one of the rehab, just get back to doing the precious basics of life type of things.”
Landeskog was skating with the team regularly by the second round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. He wasn’t engaging in full practices, but he wasn’t just standing and pushing pucks around, either.
There was a prevailing thought then, if the Avs kept playing for long enough, it might buy him enough time to try. Now, almost a year removed, was he that close that a Western Conference Final appearance might have been possible?
“I wish I could say yes. But, no, it really wasn’t,” he said. “I think there was a time during last year where I was very hopeful for the playoffs, and I think I almost let the calendar dictate sort of how I was approaching everything. But things happen and yeah, I wasn’t that close.”
There was renewed optimism just before the start of this season. Landeskog played in the pro-am event at the 2024 BMW Championship at Castle Pines.
He told fans along the course, and the assembled media that he wasn’t sure which game, but he’d be back this season. That hasn’t happened, and general manager Chris MacFarland all but ruled him out for this regular season last week.
“There was a little downturn right there, kind of ironically, right around training camp, so I stayed off the ice for a couple months,” Landeskog said. “We’ll get to see all of it in this documentary unfold. It’s been, what seven, eight months since then? It’s been numerous ups and downs.
“It just goes to show you how hard it is, how complex it is, how many things have to kind of come together and I guess maybe how naive I’ve been for so long. When you hear me talk today, it’s very different than what it was at the start of last season, or at the BMW or the season-ending press conference the year before. I continue to learn about the anatomy, how much goes into it, about my own body, about how complex it is. But, the optimism is still there. It’s just, I’m not putting timelines on things.”
Landeskog’s on-ice appearances with the Avalanche have been much less frequent this season. That’s been by his design.
He is skating, more than we know. It’s just been at an undisclosed local rink, away from fans and media at Family Sports Center.
“For a while, people … obviously, I don’t blame anybody for watching or anything like that. But for me, it became hard because then I had to relive it when I wasn’t in a space where I was supposed to look good,” he said.
“You go out and you don’t look good, and then you have people reaching out asking, ‘How are you doing?’ And ‘It doesn’t look great,’ or whatever, right? So now you’re inviting everybody in again. I’ve just been trying to stay in my kind of bubble, and it’s been really helpful for me this year.”
Landeskog still has more work to do before it’s time to try and practice with the team. Then, if he can get to a place where it’s time to try and play in games again, no one knows how his knee will react.
How much will he be able to play in one game? How much time will he need between games?
Ball started off his comeback on a minutes limit, but that has increased over the course of the Bulls season. He’s not the same player he was before the surgery, but he’s been an effective role player.
Those might be hard questions to answer for Landeskog, but he wants to reach that point and see how he can answer them.
“I’m hopeful. I’m excited about where I’m at and continue progressing,” he said. “There are unknowns. Are there things I still have to check and boxes still have to check? Yeah, there are a few, for sure, but I’m hopeful.”
It’s still the goal he’s striving for, but for his own mental health, Landeskog doesn’t think about what it will feel like at Ball Arena that night when he makes his comeback. That feeling, the goosebumps, it wasn’t helping him stay present and focused on the work at hand.
He still wants it though. Just as much as you do.
“Throughout this whole thing, the support has been incredible from all over the world,” Landeskog said. “The support from Avs faithful and as well as the organization, has been incredible from all the way up to the top.
“The patience they’ve shown with me, it doesn’t go unnoticed. And everybody, from training staff and coaches and players, they’ve continued treating me as if I was in the lineup. That’s all I could ever ask for. And it’s been just another reason why this organization, this city, is so special to me.”
