Gabriel Landeskog, Tyler Seguin bring a big-picture perspective to Game 7 pressure cooker

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DENVER — The Dallas Stars were loose Thursday morning. An optional morning skate was punctuated by big smiles, elaborate celebrations of pedestrian goals, loud chatter and general jocularity befitting a team with a series lead. Oh, sure, the stakes were still harrowingly high, but having the safety net of a potential Game 7 at home at least allowed for a little light-heartedness.

The Colorado Avalanche, on the other hand, were a little tight. Their locker room was a little quiet, the weight of the evening’s contest heavy around each neck. There was so much on the line for Colorado — another year of Nathan MacKinnon’s prime potentially wasted, another series of future-mortgaging win-now moves potentially squandered, another step closer to being one-Cup wonders potentially taken. There was a palpable tension lurking in every stall.

Well, almost every stall.

“It’s another day in paradise to me,” Gabriel Landeskog said, a big smile on his face. “Backs are against the wall in a must-win at home. Doesn’t get much better. These are the moments, these competitive moments, you really miss when you don’t have this.”

When you’re on the sidelines for nearly three years — some days feeling like you’re on the verge of making it back and some days feeling like you should just give up because it’s never going to happen — Thursday was not the kind of day you take for granted. Landeskog’s oft-chronicled and unprecedented road back to the NHL from a knee injury originally suffered during the 2020 playoffs and exacerbated during the Avalanche’s 2022 Stanley Cup run has rewired his brain, altered its chemistry. This 32-year-old Landeskog is different than the 29-year-old Landeskog who last suited up in this kind of situation.

Oh, he’s just as competitive. He wants to win just as badly. Hell, after spending three years of his prime in doctors’ offices and operating rooms and rehab centers and gyms, you’d think he’d feel more urgency than just about anybody in that room.

But he’s also a little more grateful just to be here, a little more appreciative of the privilege of playing in the NHL. This is the least hockey thing you can say, and it goes against everything we’ve all been led to believe about professional athletes. But deep down, Landeskog knew that, win or lose on Thursday night, he already had won.

“You realize it’s not going to last forever, that’s for sure,” Landeskog told The Athletic. “When you’re in these moments, it’s easy to feel the weight. Maybe it’s nervous, maybe it’s tight, maybe it’s anxious. But for me, it’s just a great opportunity. There really isn’t any pressure. For me, pressure is going to work and not knowing if you’re ever going to be back doing what you love. That was more pressure to me than what this is. When I was grinding away, not knowing if I was going to get this opportunity again, those days were really pressure packed for me, with all the anxiety over top of it. This isn’t pressure, this is opportunity.”

And what an opportunity. This, man. This was what Landeskog missed, craved, needed. A delirious crowd, an elite opponent, a season on the line. A breathless, breakneck pace, end-to-end chances, incomprehensible mood swings. Incredible saves, preposterous bounces, ultimate tests of character.

A 2-0 lead. A 4-3 deficit. A 7-4 win.

A Game 7 on Saturday.

“That’s playoff hockey for you,” Landeskog said after posting two assists in Colorado’s victory. “That’s what makes it so great, is you’ve got to find a way to stay mentally strong the whole time, as a group. I thought we did that tonight.”

It starts with Landeskog. With that calm, that 30,000-foot view. A few stalls around the oval-shaped Avalanche dressing room sits MacKinnon, one of the most intense competitors the league has ever seen, someone permanently living in the moment. Across from him is Cale Makar, one of the game’s greatest talents, someone who was kicking himself and demanding more from himself after going without a goal for the first five games of the series. In the middle is Landeskog 2.0, the captain, the emotional linchpin, able to live in and out of the moment, able to appreciate the joy while still getting lost in the work, able to understand that playing is every bit the privilege that winning is.

That perspective is rare in the win-at-all-costs world of the NHL, and it’s hard-earned for Landeskog. It’s also critical for the Avalanche as they handle the wild momentum swings in this series. Colorado coach Jared Bednar listed them off after the game himself. Dallas didn’t have a chance without Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson, and after losing its last seven regular-season games. Colorado didn’t have a chance after falling behind 2-1. Dallas was toast after the Avs dominated Game 4. The Avs were cooked after dropping Game 5. Game 6 was over a half-dozen different times, each team resurrected over and over until an own-goal, of all things, doomed Dallas to defeat.

MacKinnon said he couldn’t recall an elimination game with such wild swings.

“It’s definitely a privilege to be in this position,” he said. “Not many people get to experience the way you feel playing in front of 20,000 people, trying to please a lot of people. It’s a great challenge.”

Sounded downright Landeskogian. That’s captain stuff.

Just down the hall at Ball Arena, it was the Stars whose room was a little quiet, a little tight. When you have a third-period lead in an elimination game and don’t close it out, it lingers. Now the weight is back on their shoulders — the pressure, the concern, the potential for being labeled chokers.

But Landeskog isn’t the only player in this series with that big-picture perspective.

The Stars celebrate an overtime win after a goal by Tyler Seguin in Game 3. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

Because this is what it was all about for Tyler Seguin, too, right? This moment right here, on the ice against one of his biggest rivals, in their barn, trying to silence their fans, trying to end their season, getting one step closer to the Stanley Cup he’s been chasing since he won it all as a wide-eyed 19-year-old damn near half a lifetime ago.

This had to be the moment Seguin was envisioning as he went through all those mind-numbing drills, those tedious exercises to slowly — oh, god, so slowly — strengthen his hip, increase its mobility, give him a fighting chance. This was what kept him going through all the pain and monotony and doubt.

Wasn’t it?

“I don’t think I even thought this far,” Seguin told The Athletic. “I was thinking about getting back to that first practice on my own, then my first practice with the team, then my first game with the team, then my first playoff game. Now you say first elimination game. Things just tick off (the list) and you stay in the moment the best you can.”

Seguin’s road back wasn’t nearly as dramatic or unlikely as Landeskog’s, though he harbored the same doubts and fears and moments of weakness during his four-and-a-half-month grind. But the effect it all had on him is familiar. He has that same 30,000-foot view.

“It’s funny how rounds go,” Seguin said. “The deeper you get in the round, the more media comes to talk to you and says the word ‘pressure.’ It’s kind of nonstop. But you get tons of perspective sitting on your couch and just wanting to be in these moments, right? Can you handle it a little better, can you collect yourself a little quicker? Probably. Because you’re just so excited to have this opportunity.”

It’s all still fresh for Seguin, who said he’ll be able to think more profoundly about his road back, and the immense personal satisfaction that comes with returning in fine form, when he’s lounging on his boat on the lake in a couple of months. For now, his focus is on beating the Avalanche. It’s something he wasn’t sure he’d get to do — focusing on a game, that is. It’s something he won’t take for granted. Not at his age. Not after everything he went through to get here. Not ever again.

“This is fun,” he said.

The fun now shifts to Saturday night in Dallas. Two of the best teams in the league, two legitimate Stanley Cup contenders, playing each other a month too early but playing each other nonetheless. A Game 7 for the chance to become the favorite in the West to reach the Stanley Cup Final. These are two experienced, tested teams, but no one is immune to that kind of burden, that kind of heaviness, that kind of, yes, pressure.

Everyone will feel the heat.

But two players in particular will understand better than any the privilege of that pressure. And their teams will be better off for it.

“You’d be surprised how quickly it comes back,” Landeskog said when asked if it all feels normal yet. “You’d be surprised how quickly you adapt to being in this environment again, and that high-pressure life of a playoff series.”

Then he smiled.

“I don’t take any of it for granted,” he said. “And I’m loving every minute of it.”

(Top photo: Michael Martin / NHLI via Getty Images)

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