O CaptainI My Captain! Our Stanley Cup’s undone;
Your Avs shipped seven to Winnipeg, the Knights in OT won.
“I think I say this as nicely as I can to the room we have: There is no Gabe,” defenseman Josh Manson told me Tuesday following the Avalanche’s midday practice at Ball Arena. “Gabe is Gabe. There’s a reason Gabe (has) been an NHL All-Star captain since he was 19 years old, whatever it was.
“Gabe is Gabe. You don’t replace Gabe. That’s just the way it goes.”
Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog, the rug that really tied the 2022 Stanley Cup champs’ room together, earlier that day watched his mates in sweats, his bad right knee flanked by Logan O’Connor’s bum hip.
Oh, he’s in our meetings, coach Jared Bednar insists. He’s here. To a point.
Alas, you can’t lead a Cup-winning club from the tub. The Avs don’t lack talent. Or speed. Or skill.
They lack spine.
They’re missing grit. Edge. Someone who’ll push back during a scrum. Someone the other bench knows not to mess with.
Someone who never gives up, be it on lost causes or loose pucks. Someone who refuses to be outworked. Someone who demands the same from his peers.
“Even on the ice, the way he plays on the ice, the way he is in the room, you just can’t replace that,” Manson continued. “Now we can try and fill, and we have lots of guys that can step up, fill, be vocal, talk about the way the team is.
“But on the ice, you just can’t replace a guy like that. And in the room, you can’t replace him, because he’s just — he’s a leader. He’s a captain. He’s a natural guy. He’s a man. He just knows how to handle his business and keep a good pulse on things.”
He wouldn’t put up with some of the bull junk Avalanche fans have witnessed over the last month or so. Would he?
These Avs are gifted but sloppy, dangerous and undisciplined, the proverbial million-dollar arm with a five-cent head. Without Landeskog, their Crash Davis, the Avs feel like the Western Conference’s Nuke LaLoosh — a wild stallion who brings the heat while forever losing the strike zone.
“You could just look at our team (two years ago) and be like, ‘Oh, man, we are just so good, right?’” Manson reflected. “It’s this weird confidence that we had.
“This team — I don’t think you ever want to compare teams to ’22, just because it was a unique situation, in my opinion, with the way we had our team built. But this team, you can look at it and go, ‘OK, we’re good. We just need to play.’ We have to know we have to play. We have to play in the right way. We’re not just going to blow teams out and come back with four goals. You’ve got to play a solid, solid game. Especially against Winnipeg (in the postseason).”
They don’t lack stars. Or want-to. They lack glue. A voice that can hold this race car together when the transmission starts to shake.
And it will. Half the Avs games this season turned into the Nationals at old Bandimere Speedway — on ice. The Burgundy & Blue Bomber either left the other guy eating its dust or burst into flames about 50 feet off the line.
Nobody, including Bednar, ever sounded quite sure which one it was going to be, though. Which was part of the problem. Still is.
“But the consistency in that, like, we’re getting to the point here now (in the playoffs) where it’s got to be every single night, every single shift,” the coach said. “So that’s a stressor.”
So, too, are the little things. Those grindy finer points, fundamental cracks that the Avs hoped enough volume scoring and enough Nathan MacKinnon could paper over.
In the six games immediately preceding the regular-season finales in both April 2022 and April 2023, the Avs averaged 2.8 penalties per tilt. Over their last six this month, with Edmonton due at Ball Arena on Thursday, that’s jumped up to 3.83 whistles per game.
“When it’s hard is when you think about his absence, right?” Manson said. “It’s been two years, and we’ve been in this team without him for two years. And that’s kind of where you have to keep your mindset at — he’s just like an added bonus when we get him back.
“But right now, you can’t think about it. Because if you think about it, now you’re focusing on what you’re missing, instead of focusing on what you have. And that’s — you can’t help it. But his absence is, when you think about it, it is a big loss. Because of who he is as a man and who he is as a player.”
Someone who sets the bar. Someone who polices the standard. Someone who takes on every back check, every faceoff, every shift, like it just might be his last.
And it might. O Captain, it might.
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.
