Jared Bednar did his final radio hit of the season on Altitude Sports Radio this morning, and the topic of Gabriel Landeskog and his health came up, among other things.
You can listen to the entire interview here. I would recommend giving it a listen yourselves just to hear the tone, because that is sometimes difficult to get across in written form. In addition to some injury updates, he talked about how the team will look different next season.
“It’ll be a busy offseason,” Bednar said. “The team will certainly look different next year in many regards, I would think, just by looking at the number of free agents that we have.”
The Avalanche are starting their staff meetings today to get ready for the offseason.
First up, the health of Andrew Cogliano.
“He’s doing okay,” Bednar said. “He was around the rink the other night. He was going for further evaluation just to get clear on what he needs to do for his rehab process, and to get back to health.”
Bednar reiterated a lot of what he said on Sunday morning in regards to the league not disciplining Eberle for the hit. Cogliano, 35, is one of the many unrestricted free agents the team will have to make a decision on.
After the Game Seven loss to Seattle, Bednar said the team would release an injury list after the year. It has not even been 48 hours, so that is probably still coming, but he did give a hint as to what some players were dealing with. Nothing abnormal for any team after a long season.
“There’s some guys that are going to go under the knife and have surgery,” Bednar said.
He didn’t go into any further detail on who just yet, but you’d think the longer offseason does give them a bit more time to get healthy.
Finally, Gabriel Landeskog. Vic Lombardi asked about the Captain, and where he’s at mentally at the moment.
“I think he’s in a good place. He’s making decisions on what he has to do in order to get back healthy. This year was tough for him,” Bednar said. “I mean, he’s a dedicated guy, wants to get back and play and be with his teammates and help lead this team to another Cup. So, I think, getting some clarity on his situation now, for him, for our organization, is a positive thing. He feels good about it. We feel good about it. We’ll kind of release what he’s going to do next once he makes his final decisions here.”
At his press conference at the end of the year, Landeskog reiterated he’s confident he’ll play again when I asked him. We’ll just have to let it all play out and see what the next steps are to make sure he gets to that point.
Again, you can listen to the interview here. If and when we get an injury report from the team, I will have it up at CHN.
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