It ain’t me, Gabe. It’s them. The Avalanche without Gabriel Landeskog are a crapshoot. Only the “shoot” part comes and goes in the breeze.

Thump Detroit 5-0 in Motown. Come home and get blanked by those same Wings, 2-0, some 48 hours later. Who flips from cooking like Gordon Ramsay on a Saturday to playing with their food on a Monday night?

Teams without a captain, that’s who.

“You know, you try to help out wherever you can, but at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do (from the bench),” Landeskog said last week. “You want to be out there on the ice. You want to compete with the guys. You want to be a part of it. But, yeah, you’re a sounding board. You’re a part of it. You’re in some of the meetings. You’re not in others. Keeping sane really hasn’t been an issue for me.”

The Avs will be well-represented at the Winter Olympics over the next two weeks. Save your rosary beads — and your sanity — for whenever Sweden comes on the TV. Landeskog, the Colorado captain who hasn’t played since January 4 after suffering a nasty upper-body injury against the Panthers, intends to suit up for his home country soon — then use it as a launch point for the second half of the Avs’ season.

We don’t know how Landy will look in Italy with the Swedish national team. Or how long it’ll take him to find his feet. But we do know this: The Avs have been a rudderless ship without him. We know how badly they need him back in one piece at the end of the month.

“You just see the impact that (Landeskog) has,” TNT/Warner Brothers Discovery NHL analyst Eddie Olczyk told me by phone a few days ago. “He’s still such an effective player, and with him being out all this time, it just kind of throws a little bit of a curveball at coach (Jared) Bednar and the lineup. And some guys are playing spots probably higher up (in the lineup) than they should.”

For the last month, the Avs have too often resembled their spring 2023 form, that bunch who’d tried to defend the Stanley Cup with all speed and no soul. They’ve lacked focus, poise and physicality. The power play has gone from historically bad to hysterically inept.

Midseason slumps are inevitable during the marathon of an NHL regular season. And the Avs’ latest funk is about more than one guy, we’ll grant you. Like the Nuggets and Aaron Gordon, we’ve gotten used to not seeing Landeskog in the lineup. But like AG, isn’t it funny how the captain seems to make everything else in the rotation sort of … come together? And not just in the box score?

“I felt like (Landy’s) game was just starting to get to a really good spot before he got hurt, which was disappointing,” Bednar said recently. “Now he’s missed significant time again. No. 1, I’m excited that he’s going to be able to go and play (in the Olympics). No. 2, I think, for him playing those games, he’ll just come back sharp and ready to go for us. So that’s a good thing, instead of missing another three weeks with a break and then trying to get up to speed after two months off.”

On Jan. 4, the Avs took the ice in Sunrise, Florida, against the Panthers. At one point, Landeskog appeared to lose his left skate and went careening into the net and end boards.

The Avs haven’t been the same since. Colorado had a record of 31-2-7 that Sunday morning. With no Landy, they’ve gone 6-7-2. Over the last 10 games before the Olympic break, they went 4-5-1.

And it’s the grindy stuff where they’ve felt it the most. During that 4-5-1 stretch, they’ve taken 23 hits per game from their opponents. They’d gotten hit 20 times per game over the previous 45. In the 41 games before Jan. 5, Colorado ranked 18th in power-play goal difference (plus-18) and 26th in power-play scoring percentage (16.3%).

Since Landy’s injury, Colorado ranks last among NHL teams in power-play goals scored (four in 14 games), last in power-play goal difference (zero) and last in power-play scoring percentage (10.5%).

On Jan. 3, the Avs scored two power-play goals early in the third period to rally past Carolina on the road, 5-3. In the 15 games that followed, they’ve scored four goals with an extra man. Total.

ESPN analyst and former Avs Stanley Cup champ Erik Johnson told me Friday that he thinks this is just one of those rocky stretches that every team goes through — especially in the dog days of late January.

“Listen, they’ve played the last three seasons without (Landeskog),” Johnson noted, “to good regular-season success.”

True. But postseason success? Not so much. The Avs can skate circles around bad teams, and even most of the good ones. Yet the great ones, once in the playoffs, are inevitably going to slow things down — and try to drag the burgundy and blue into the mud right along with them.

Dallas. Vegas. Bums, the lot. Yet to survive and advance in the playoffs, you’ve got to be able to play ugly. To cash in on special teams. To do the talking with your elbows. Your shoulders. And even your fists, when necessary.

Which is why there’s more to Landeskog’s presence than a stat line of seven goals and 22 points over 41 appearances so far in ’25-26. When Gabe’s right, he’s everybody’s big brother. A calming voice who’s seen everything in the game twice over. A protector who will demand the best from his brothers, but also happily throw down if another team ever dares to mess with them. A counterpoint to Nathan MacKinnon’s relentless drive and blunt, flinty persona.

“They’ve really missed him here this last stretch (of games) because he does have the ability to change the game, to change the momentum of a game,” Olczyk continued. “If you need a guy to stand in front of the net, if you need a big hit, he can do that.”

They need both. Oh, how they’ve missed both. Good luck, Gabe. Get healthy. Get nasty. Get right. Without a captain on the bridge, this glorious ship could sink into the springtime again. And take the last gasps of a dynasty right along with it.

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