Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog sweeps NHL’s Masterton and Messier honors after a remarkable return

Gabriel Landeskog has been named the NHL’s 2025-26 recipient of the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy and the Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award, a rare double recognition for the Colorado Avalanche captain. The league’s decision caps a season defined by a full-circle comeback and a return to the kind of on-ice authority Colorado relied on before his injury timeline reshaped his career.

The Masterton Memorial Trophy goes to the player who best represents perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey. It is voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and this year’s selection carried an extra weight because Landeskog’s story is rooted in long rehabilitation after a knee injury that kept him out of three consecutive regular seasons. According to The Athletic’s account of his path back to the league, Landeskog’s setbacks traced to a skate-blade cut over his right knee during the 2020 playoffs, followed by four surgeries and, in May 2023, a cartilage transplant described as a last-resort option.

Landeskog’s return was not immediate, or linear. He began building back game readiness with a conditioning assignment to the AHL’s Colorado Eagles in April 2025 before returning to Colorado’s lineup. In Colorado’s 2025 first-round series against the Dallas Stars, he appeared in five games, a brief but meaningful glimpse of the captain at NHL speed after extended time away.

This season, Landeskog provided something closer to the full version of himself, returning to regular-season action and playing 60 games. In that stretch, he produced 14 goals and 35 points, numbers that reflect a leadership-heavy role as much as pure scoring. Colorado’s production, and particularly its ability to play through the middle stages of games, leaned on his steadiness, defensive discipline, and the way he could make the team look organized even when opponents were pressing.

When the Avalanche advanced deep into the postseason, Landeskog’s impact remained visible even as the team ran into a familiar challenge in the final stretch. In their Western Conference final run, he scored six goals in 13 games. The Golden Knights ultimately eliminated Colorado in a sweep, but the Avalanche’s run still underscored that Landeskog’s return had moved beyond survival and into meaningful playoff contribution.

The Messier Leadership Award, meanwhile, is designed to recognize players who exemplify great leadership qualities for their team on and off the ice during the regular season. The award is named after Mark Messier and is selected based on leadership that teammates and observers can measure in daily work, accountability, and the ability to raise the standard. In Landeskog, the league appears to have found a captain whose leadership is inseparable from the perseverance the Masterton recognizes.

What makes the double honor especially notable is the timing. Landeskog had also been a finalist for the Masterton in the prior year, making this year’s outcome less like a surprise and more like the resolution of a longer narrative. Still, the scale of both awards suggests the league viewed Colorado’s captain as more than a comeback story, as a player whose presence affected how the franchise functioned during a season with playoff and roster-building stakes.

For Colorado, the next question is how to integrate Landeskog’s restored durability into the Avalanche’s longer-term plans as they look to avoid the kind of postseason outcomes that can derail title conversations. For the league, the double recognition sets a high bar for what “leadership” means in modern hockey, showing that persistence through uncertainty can become its own kind of performance.