Denver Post sports writer Bennett Durando opens up the Avs Mailbag periodically throughout the season. Pose an Avalanche- or NHL-related question for the Avs Mailbag.

What’s the latest on Gabe Landeskog? When will I see him back on the ice with the team?

— Mark, Arvada

He hasn’t been in Denver for most of the season. There’s no set date yet, but he’s expected to be back in town soon and skating under team supervision. The Avs anticipate he will be able to return to game action before the end of the regular season, but first, Landeskog’s next step is getting back on the ice.

Hi Bennett, it looks like the Avalanche are starting to get healthy now that we’re entering the final stretch. It seems counterintuitive but did the team kind of luck out with so much bad luck early on? Several guys got much-needed rest since the Stanley Cup run.

— Mike, Denver

I understand your theory, and I support sports fans thinking whatever it takes to feel optimism about their team. The reality, of course, is that sustaining a bunch of injuries early in a season has no correlation to whether or not more injuries happen late in a season. Anything can happen at any time. And to your point about much-needed rest, the process of staying well-conditioned while recovering is no walk in the park. I can tell you the Avs aren’t sitting around and thinking they’ve gotten lucky.

Then again, Jared Bednar has made one or two comments over the last few months about how it’s better to catch the injury bug early than late. Maybe this will work out perfectly, with a fully healthy team making another Stanley Cup run. Either way, my point is it’s normal to think that way, and if you want to decide the Avalanche got their injuries out of the way and are all set for the playoffs, more power to you.

How does this year’s performance by Alex Newhook (his recent run of good play) and Bo Byram (injury) impact their next contract with the Avs?

— @DenverDad99 (via Twitter)

Definitely too early to say with Byram because of what happened last year, when he missed months but became a star in the Stanley Cup Final. What if he goes on a tear again this postseason? The last impression can sometimes be more important than the first, and if Byram becomes an RFA with a second remarkable playoff performance freshly tacked on his resume at age 21, his value will increase. For now, the injury history stands to impact what’s next.

There are different directions the Avalanche can take: a short bridge deal that would 1) help Colorado’s cap hit for the next year or two, and 2) allow Byram to prove he can stay healthy for a full season and play at a high level, positioning him to slingshot his salary in the next, next contract.

Or maybe with that in mind, the Avs try to lock him up on a longer-term deal at a more intermediate salary. Would they be willing to pay Byram, say, $4.5 million to $5 million when he has been this injury-prone, if it means they don’t have to pay more than that for the next five or six years? There’s a lot to weigh, mostly involving the central question of how much Colorado wants to mortgage the future on someone with a mountainous ceiling that has only been on display for short bursts so far.

Before offering Newhook conjecture, we’ll see if the recent surge is who he can be on consistent basis. He is certainly playing himself in the direction of a more lucrative deal for now, on pace for 20 goals with a 5-on-5 shooting percentage eclipsing 16% in the last year of his entry-level deal.

Hey Bennett, first time question asker, long time reader. What’s the main thing that the Avs need to improve on in this second half of the season?

— Jake Weese, Auburn, Ala.

The struggle to play “a full 60” has manifested itself in multiple ways. For a long chunk through December and early January, it was digging holes with bad first periods. Lately, the trend has been the opposite: The Avs are getting complacent with a lead and caught on their heels during the third period. It happened against Washington, Anaheim, St. Louis and Pittsburgh and ultimately cost them two of those games.

Goaltending has exceeded expectations, forward depth and scoring balance is starting to improve, and the blue line is getting healthy. The Avs also recently surpassed the three-goals-per-game mark, which they were looking up at for almost the entire first half of the season.

The power play and penalty kill have had inconsistencies, but neither is a straight-up weakness. Everything seems to be trending in the right direction, but for whatever reason, Colorado has just let a few attainable points slip away in the standings because of lapses that last only one period.

What do we know about Bo Byram’s status at this point? He was week-to-week when he went out with no hint that he would miss at least half the season. He is such an exciting player and it’s so unfortunate that now an (apparently) non-concussion situation has turned into so many missed games.

— Jenn Goldberg, Denver

One last time for the people in the back: Stop with the “apparently non-concussion” nonsense. As I have written multiple times, it was a lower-body injury. If you’re not convinced, maybe this quote from Byram will help: “I was just happy it wasn’t my head.”

Hey Bennett, love your coverage. Do you think we’ll ever see an Avs Ring of Fame like the one the Broncos have? There are so many quality players who have played here over the years but haven’t done enough to get their numbers retired. Guys like Sandis Ozolinsh and Rob Blake. What do you think?

— Vic, Commerce City

With you all the way. I always enjoy pondering the future legacies of players, teams, eras of a franchise, etc. (Maybe that’s just a media thing.) So your point will probably become applicable to this generation of Avalanche players, too. No. 29 will almost definitely be retired someday. Maybe Nos. 8, 92 and 96 as well, or at least some combination of those. But will Erik Johnson’s No. 6 be retired? He’s one of the longest tenured Avs ever, he stuck around through a franchise low point, and he won a Stanley Cup here. He was never the guy who scored a lot or did the things that tend to result in retired numbers, but he’ll retire a valued figure in Avalanche history.

Same goes for Valeri Nichushkin’s No. 13, or J.T. Compher’s No. 37. Not every important player ends up in the rafters, but I think there’s always a place for a team-specific Hall of Fame, or Ring of Fame, or whatever you want to call it.