The Colorado Avalanche ended Gabriel Landeskog’s conditioning loan early.
Their captain rejoins the NHL club on Tuesday after spending most of the past week with the AHL’s Colorado Eagles, the Avalanche announced.
The 32-year-old hasn’t played an NHL game since June 26, 2022, when his assist helped the Avalanche beat the Tampa Bay Lightning to win the Stanley Cup. He’s had a right knee injury that involved cartilage transplant surgery in May 2023.
Landeskog has been on long-term injury reserve during his recovery. Under the collective bargaining agreement, the Avalanche could assign him on a conditioning loan to the AHL while he’s on LTIR for up to the longer of six days and three games for the purpose of determining whether he’s fit to play. Although it’s been six days, Landeskog only participated in two games, while the Eagles have three regular-season games remaining.
Landeskog played his first professional games in almost three years on April 11 and 12 with the Eagles. While he was left off the scoreboard in his first game, he had a goal and assist in his second.
“Physically, I feel great,” Landeskog told reporters after his first game. “Obviously, it’s the first game in a long time, so I got plenty of things to work on and get better at, but it was a lot of fun.”
Although the Stockholm, Sweden, native said he has a lot of things to improve on to get back into the flow, it was fun to be back.
“Obviously, there were times where I didn’t know if it was ever going to happen, so it felt great being in the battle again and on the bench, in the room, on the ice, all of the nuances of a hockey game,” he said.
Avalanche teammates Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Josh Manson, as well as former teammate Andrew Cogliano and Avs GM Chris MacFarland, attended the April 11 match to support Landeskog.
Landeskog could be back on the ice with his teammates for the first-round matchup against the Dallas Stars if his knee responded well to the game action. The Avalanche are currently using LTIR pool space to exceed the salary cap’s upper limit by just over $6 million, according to PuckPedia. Landeskog carries a $7-million cap hit.
There’s no salary cap in the playoffs, meaning the team wouldn’t need to clear cap space to take him off LTIR.
In 738 career NHL games, Landeskog has 248 goals and 323 assists for 571 points.
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