Gabriel Landeskog

Last Season

Fourteen goals and 35 points in 60 games, plus-29, on sixteen and a half minutes a night. For a player who had not played an NHL season in three years before this one, the plus-29 is the number that matters far more than the totals.

The Finesse Game

The hands still work around the net and the shot is decent from the slot. He is not the thirty-goal scorer he was before the injury, and the ice time reflects a club managing him carefully.

What has survived intact is the reading of the game. He supports the puck properly, is always in a position to receive, and does not turn it over in the neutral zone.

The skating is the obvious casualty. He was never fast and the knee has not helped.

The Physical Game

Six-one and 215, and he still plays a heavy game — forechecks, finishes checks, goes to the net. Forty-seven penalty minutes in sixty games is the mark of a player who has not decided to protect himself.

That is remarkable given what the knee took, and it is also the thing that will determine how long this second career lasts.

The Intangibles

Three seasons lost, a cartilage transplant, and a return that almost nobody in the sport expected. He captained this club to a Cup and came back to a team that had moved on without him.

At thirty-three, with that history, every projection carries a medical asterisk. Sixty games was a triumph; eighty would be a different kind of story.