‘It was worth the wait:’ Avalanche’s MacKinnon on Landeskog’s return to form
The Colorado Avalanche took a 2-0 series lead over the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night, and while this team has been a Stanley Cup contender for a long time and has added several star players over the years, it looked a lot like the old days.
Nathan MacKinnon had three points, including a primary assist on the power play when he fed captain Gabriel Landeskog for a crucial goal that gave Colorado a 2-1 lead at the time.
It extended Landeskog’s point streak this postseason to five games, a level of success for Landeskog that seemed impossible at several points in recent years.
In the postgame press conference, the team’s leadership duo addressed the media at the podium, and MacKinnon took the opportunity to express how much it means to him and the Avalanche as a whole to have their captain back in the battle with them.
“It’s just a void you can’t fill,” MacKinnon said. “We waited a long time for him to come back, and it was worth the wait. I think every month he got better this season. It’s a lot of time to come back from… I think obviously as a person, just a human, awesome to have around.”
“That’s enough,” Landeskog interjected as he sat right beside MacKinnon, drawing laughs throughout the room.
Nathan MacKinnon: *complimenting Landeskog for an extended amount of time* Gabe Landeskog: "That's enough." 😂
The No. 2 overall pick in the 2011 NHL Draft and the No. 1 selection in the 2013 NHL Draft, Landeskog and MacKinnon grew up together as NHL players and ultimately, stars.
Landeskog was named captain, the youngest in NHL history at the time, at 19 years of age, and he was the clear-cut leader of the locker room when MacKinnon broke onto the scene with a strong rookie campaign in 2013-14.
The Avs went through some lean years before MacKinnon took the leap from being a very good player to one of the three best in the NHL, and just as the team was reaching its apex, Landeskog suffered a knee injury that cost him the end of the 2021-22 regular season.
The Swede gutted it out for the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoff run that saw them both become champions, but he missed the entirety of the next three regular seasons dealing with an increasingly frustrating recovery, that included a knee cartilage replacement surgery in 2023.
His future as a player was in doubt at times, but Landeskog returned for last year’s first-round playoff series against the Dallas Stars before finally returning to a full-time role in the regular season this year.
On Monday, he was named as one of three finalists for the Masterton Trophy, awarded to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
It was one of the easiest calls in NHL award history.