The Avalanche have been talking about their depth on the forward lines since before training camp. We are about to see just how deep they really are.

A week after losing right wing Mikko Rantanen to a lower-body injury, the Avalanche announced Tuesday that captain and left wing Gabriel Landeskog will be out for what coach Jared Bednar said will be a "significant" amount of time with a lower-body injury.

That's two-thirds of the No. 1 line.

Landeskog will be out "longer than week to week," Bednar said after practice. He didn't have anything new to report on Rantanen, who will miss his third game Wednesday when the Avalanche play Florida at the Pepsi Center.

"Landy got hurt over the last couple games, came to practice Sunday, had some discomfort and he went for further evaluation," Bednar said. "He has a lower-body injury and he's going to miss some significant time here. I really don't have a timetable on him."

The Avalanche didn't practice Monday.

Landeskog, who played 20 1-2 minutes Saturday in the Avalanche's 5-2 loss to Anaheim, has seven points (three goals, four assists) in 11 games.

So center Nathan MacKinnon will have two new linemates Wednesday, Nazem Kadri and Joonas Donskoi.

"Everybody has to play their best, like always," MacKinnon said. "Obviously missing Gabe and Mikko we're a worse team. Hopefully we can kind of weather the storm for a few weeks until they get better."

Kadri, who has seven points (five goals, two assists) in 11 games, was centering the second line with Donskoi and Andre Burakovsky.

"I think I understand the way Nate wants to play and his tendencies," Kadri said. "I think we'll be able to generate some chemistry on the ice and hopefully that leads to some success. With a couple guys out there's some minutes on the table for people to take advantage of. We've been talking about how good our depth has been all year, and now's a perfect example to show it.

"We're not going to sit here and feel sorry for ourselves. Obviously those are hard guys to replace, and I'm not sure we can replace them, but we have good enough guys in this dressing room to be able to step up and answer the bell and produce."

Tyson Jost, who was centering the third line, will move up to the second line with Burakovsky and J.T. Compher. Vladislav Kamenev, a healthy scratch the first 11 games, centered a line Tuesday with Valeri Nichushkin and Colin Wilson. The line of Matt Nieto, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Matt Calvert remained intact.

Wilson left practice with an undisclosed injury and won't play Wednesday, so the Avalanche recalled Jayson Megna from the Colorado Eagles of the American Hockey League. Megna, 29, was impressive in training camp and had four points (three goals, one assist) in seven games with the Eagles.

"We have guys that want to prove we can have success without some of those guys in the lineup," Bednar said. "It's disappointing that they're out, but this is something you have to work through.

"You look at Pittsburgh, they lost (Evgeni) Malkin, they didn't hang their heads. They have other players stepping up in meaningful roles and they've continued to have success. Every team is going to go through it at some point."



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