It’s been nearly five years since Gabe Landeskog played his 700th career regular-season NHL game on Nov. 22, 2021 against the Ottawa Senators.
He turned just 29 years old the following day and was firmly in the middle of his prime. Landeskog had already spent more than a decade in the NHL, had served as the Colorado Avalanche’s captain since he was 19 years old and had six goals and 15 points in 13 games to that point.
There was little reason to think his 800th game would be anything other than an inevitable milestone.
Instead, it became a number that, for a long time, seemed almost impossible to reach.
When Landeskog takes the ice Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues, he’ll suit up for his 800th game.
“I’m sure when I was playing that game, I wasn’t thinking that it’d be this long,” Landeskog told me after the Avs’ morning skate. “It’s wild, for sure.”
The road from 700 to 800 has been long. The native of Stockholm, Sweden had multiple procedures, a knee cartilage transplant, three full regular seasons away from the NHL, countless hours of rehabilitation and more than a few moments when he wasn’t sure if he would ever play another NHL game.
It also included a Stanley Cup championship, a miraculous return to the ice and a comeback that only a few people — including Landeskog himself — felt was possible when it began.
“I don’t think a lot of guys would have the mental resilience, the emotional stability, and the… I don’t even know what another word to use is,” defenseman Josh Manson said, who was still in Anaheim when Landeskog played No. 700. “Like, there are just so many things you could say about what it took for him to get from where he was to where he is now.”
The first major chapter of the story dates back to the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs. While playing in the Edmonton bubble, Landeskog suffered a freak injury when the skate blade of teammate Cale Makar accidentally cut him in Game 6 of the Avalanche’s second-round series against the Dallas Stars. The injury was just above his right knee and required a minor procedure that kept him out of the Avs’ Game 7 loss.
By the 2021-22 season, Landeskog was playing through significant discomfort.
He still produced at an elite level, scoring 30 goals and recording 59 points in 51 games. But eventually, the knee reached a point where surgery was unavoidable.
“I heard a little bit about his story and what he was dealing with, but not all the details,” center Brock Nelson said. “You start to hear more of what he had to go through and the perseverance to get back to this point. It’s pretty remarkable.”
On March 21, 2022, Landeskog underwent arthroscopic knee surgery and missed the final 23 games of the regular season.
The expectation was that he would return for the playoffs.
He did.
“If you think about it, last year [opening night] was my first-ever regular-season game with Gabe,” Manson said. “Like the day I got traded was the day he got surgery. First game back was Game 1 of playoffs.”
Landeskog played all 20 postseason games, recording 11 goals and 11 assists to help the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup in six games against the Tampa Bay Lightning on June 26, 2022.
Nobody could have known it would be his final NHL game for more than three years.
“It was a time that you kind of look back at fondly, but also, it’s kind of bittersweet looking back at it, right?” Landeskog said. “It was a hard time for me, but also a lot of good stuff, a lot of growth.”
In October 2022, afer missing all of training camp, Landeskog underwent another arthroscopic procedure on the knee. The initial expectation was that he would miss approximately 12 weeks.
Those 12 weeks came and went. Then the rest of the 2022-23 season did, too. Landeskog never returned.
After their playoff run ended, the Avalanche announced in May 2023 that he would undergo a cartilage transplant on his right knee.
The procedure was performed on May 10, 2023 and Landeskog was ruled out for the entire 2023-24 season.
It was a massive decision and one that came with no guarantee that he’d ever make it back to the NHL. Landeskog went through an extensive rehabilitation process that lasted months, then years. There were personal milestones along the way like skating, increasing his workload, and joining teammates on the ice. But there was never a definitive timetable for his return.
The Avalanche went through another regular season without their captain in 2024-25. By then, the question was no longer when he would return. It was whether he would return at all. Just ahead of the 2025 trade deadline, the Avs’ then general manager Chris MacFarland made it sound like the captain’s career might be over. It likely wasn’t his intention, but it didn’t sound great.
Not long after, Landeskog was ramping up his skates. He was suddenly sent down to the AHL for a two-game conditioning assignment, and was physically ready and able to return.
On April 23, 2025, Landeskog stepped onto the ice at Ball Arena for Game 3 of Colorado’s first-round Stanley Cup Playoff series against the Dallas Stars. It had been 1,032 days since he last played an NHL game.
“When he came back in that playoff series against Dallas, I think that was probably one of the louder environments I’ve ever been a part of,” said Nelson, who played with Landeskog for the first time that night. “I feel like that’s a night that anybody who was a part of probably remembers. … Gives you the goosebumps to think about.”
Landeskog appeared in five games against Dallas, recording one goal and three assists. The Avalanche ultimately lost the series in seven games, but the result didn’t change what Landeskog had accomplished simply by getting back into an NHL game.
The following year had its own hardships. Landeskog suffered two separate injuries during the 2025-26 season, but still managed 15 goals and 35 points in 60 games.
“They’ve been a great 800 games, you know. At least all the ones that I’ve seen and been a part of,” head coach Jared Bednar said. “It’s nice to see guys hit milestones, and 800 is a big one. Next one will be 1000.”
Landeskog also captained Sweden at the 2026 Winter Olympics and was awarded the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, which recognizes the player who best exemplifies perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
Now, at almost 34 years old, Landeskog is a regular in the Avs’ lineup. His lengthy absence is but a memory, and the milestones are becoming more realistic. It probably won’t take another five years for Landeskog to play another 100 games. But for now, this milestone comes with a little more meaning than most.
“There are definitely times where I don’t think about it at all, and it feels like a different lifetime,” Landeskog said. “But then there are also other days where I, yeah, a lot of those memories come back, and you think about the long road you had to endure, and the stuff that you did and had to do. But it’s all part of my story, I guess, and part of my journey.”