After season of injury adversity, Avalanche is healthier team in showdown with Stars ...Middle East

For most of the 2024-25 season, the Colorado Avalanche played at a disadvantage because of injuries to key players.

Now, as Game 1 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs beckons, the Avalanche is the healthier team in its opening-round matchup.

Everyone, including captain Gabe Landeskog and five players who missed the end of the regular season, practiced Friday with the club. Avs coach Jared Bednar has not revealed whether Landeskog will be in the lineup Saturday night, but did say he thinks everyone else will be available.

“I think our whole team is going to be healthy,” Bednar said. “We’ve got a few guys dinged up, but I think they’re going to be able to play. I think we’re in a good spot to start the playoffs.”

The same cannot be said for the Dallas Stars. When they face the Avs in Game 1 on Saturday night at American Airlines Center, the Stars will not have star defenseman Miro Heiskanen or leading goal scorer Jason Robertson.

Heiskanen, one of the top five defensemen in the league when healthy, hasn’t played since Jan. 28. He skated before Dallas’ practice Friday and could play at some point in this series. Robertson played in all 82 games for the Stars, finishing with 35 goals and 80 points, but he was injured in the season finale, and Dallas coach Peter DeBoer labeled him “week-to-week” on the eve of the series.

“Next man up. It’s this time of year,” DeBoer told reporters Friday in Dallas. “We’re not going to be the only team either starting without somebody or losing somebody at some point. That’s playoffs.”

The Avs didn’t face a team more shorthanded by availability issues this season until Jan. 9, a 6-1 win in Minnesota. Colorado players missed 328 games because of injury, which was third in the league behind San Jose’s 338 and Toronto’s 333, according to NHL Injury Viz.

That includes Landeskog, who missed all 82 games, but does not include the 17 missed by Valeri Nichushkin at the start of the year because of his suspension. Remove Landeskog, but add Nichushkin’s suspension, and Colorado was still third in games lost during the season behind the New York Islanders and Columbus Blue Jackets.

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Including Nichushkin’s suspension, he and Jonathan Drouin each missed 39 games, while Miles Wood missed 35, Josh Manson missed 34, and Ross Colton missed 21. Drouin, Colton, Manson, Ryan Lindgren and Nathan MacKinnon all missed the end of the regular season with varying degrees of injuries.

MacKinnon, Drouin and Colton will all be available Saturday. Manson and Lindgren are expected to be as well. The biggest uncertainty is Landeskog, who played two games in Loveland with the Colorado Eagles this past weekend and skated with the Avalanche during practices on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

The Colorado captain hasn’t appeared in an NHL game since June 26, 2022, the night the Avs won the Stanley Cup against Tampa Bay. If he does play, Landeskog would become the first player to have knee cartilage replacement surgery (which he had in May 2023) and return to NHL action.

“He’s close. He’s getting close,” Bednar said. “Every day I think he’s getting a little quicker, a little bit more confident, a little more sure of himself. He’ll be an option for us in this series.”

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