SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog will miss some time, the Avalanche said, after he was injured and needed to be helped off the ice early in the second period of what became a 2-1 loss in Florida on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
The good news, such as it is, for the Avs might be this: \u201cIt’s not his knee,\u201d forward Nathan MacKinnon said.<\/p>\n
Landeskog, who was out for nearly three full years with chronic right knee problems before returning during last season’s playoffs, is dealing now with an upper body injury, Avs coach Jared Bednar said. The severity of the issue was not immediately released by the team, and Landeskog was still being evaluated postgame. It wasn’t even clear after the game if Landeskog would be able to accompany the Avalanche to Tampa for a game there against the Lightning on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s still getting looked at and diagnosed, but it did not look comfortable,” Bednar said. \u201cHe’s going to miss some time for sure.”<\/p>\n
Landeskog crashed into a goalpost, sliding headfirst along the ice, after his left knee appeared to buckle and he lost his footing. He was down behind the goal for several minutes and was unable to skate off under his own power.<\/p>\n
“Bones heal. They just heal normally,” MacKinnon said. \u201cTendons, ligaments are kind of scary injuries in sports. I think after the process he had, obviously, it looked horrible and it’s definitely scary, devastating to see a guy like that hurt like that because he’s so tough. But the one bright side, maybe, is it’s not his knee.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacKinnon said several members of the Panthers asked Avalanche players throughout the rest of the game how Landeskog was doing, which he felt was a classy gesture. The Panthers are currently without several of their top players because of injury, including captain Aleksander Barkov.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a sensitive subject for us,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “If you love the game, you follow what he\u2019s had to go through to get back. You\u2019re also very aware of how important he is to that team. … I\u2019m just hopeful that it\u2019s short term. He\u2019s been through enough. He\u2019s too important. Just the game of hockey, we need him on the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Landeskog helped the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup in 2022, then missed nearly three full years with a chronically injured right knee \u2014 one that required several procedures before he could play again. He returned for five games in last season’s playoffs, ending more than 1,000 days of waiting between games.<\/p>\n
Landeskog has appeared in all 41 of Colorado’s games this season, a key part of the team’s historic start, and has seven goals and 15 assists. The Avalanche, even after Sunday’s loss, are 31-3-7 \u2014 by far the best record in the league and their 69 standings points are the second-most through 41 games in NHL history.<\/p>\n
Landeskog was also named to represent Sweden in next month’s Milan Cortina Olympics. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo player wants to see another player, regardless of what team they\u2019re on or who they\u2019re playing for, get seriously hurt,” Bednar said. \u201cHopefully, it\u2019s nothing too serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog will miss some time, the Avalanche said, after he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-388936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}