Gabe Landeskog is just like you.

He has envisioned that night, too. So many times. The one thing Avalanche fans want, maybe more than any other thing outside of celebrating more championships.

It’s the biggest thing Landeskog has been working toward for nearly three years: the chance to skate out onto the ice at Ball Arena again.

“For a long time, I thought about it a lot — especially early on in the recovery and right after surgery,” Landeskog told The Denver Post. “It just felt like I thought about it every time I closed my eyes.

“It gave me goosebumps every time thinking about it.”

In less than two weeks, it will be 1,000 days since Landeskog last had the chance to do what he loves. To play for the Colorado Avalanche, for his teammates, for the pride he brings to his family and to the city of Denver.

When, or if, he will get to do that again remains as much of a mystery now as it has at any point along this grueling, complicated journey back. How the process is going, or what’s gone into it, has happened mostly out of public view. Updates on Landeskog’s progress have been sparse, and often purposefully vague.

That changes Sunday. The first episode of a five-part docuseries, “A Clean Sheet” will air on TNT and TruTV at 10 a.m. MT. It will be available to stream March 21 on Max.

The series, directed by AJ Oscarson and produced by Fresh Tape Media, will provide an up-close-and-personal look at Landeskog’s attempt to come back from knee cartilage replacement surgery — something no NHL player has successfully done.

There is footage shot by Oscarson from the past two years, plus video from Landeskog’s own “daddy cam,” which gets a fun introduction in the first episode, and other footage mixed in.

“AJ’s been a rock star throughout this whole thing and done a great job,” Landeskog said. “We’ve grown very close throughout the process, because he’s been there through some of the good times, tough times, and all of it in between.

“… At times you probably don’t want the camera in your face, but at the end of the day, I committed to sharing a lot of it. It’s still only a snippet of two years of my life, but we wanted to make sure we had the camera there for some of the key moments. It’s been good.”

The episodes will air weekly, with the final one on April 13. One of the most poignant moments in the first episode is when Melissa Landeskog, Gabe’s wife, says one of the challenges was that for so long, there was so much hard work involved but no winning to celebrate.

A big part of the mental process for Landeskog during his recovery has been journaling, and he reads some of those entries on camera in the series. He also had to find small wins, whether it was being able to walk stairs again or break a sweat on the stationary bike, before bigger ones like getting back on skates.

“Then there were times where it would feel like it was so far to that next win,” Landeskog said. “You’ve got to break it down in incremental parts. Like, can I get through this workout? Yes, you did. Check. That’s a win. Throughout some of the tougher periods, some of the setbacks, especially, it’s like, just get through the day. That’s it.

“That’s really when you’re struggling and you don’t enjoy it is when you’ve had to backtrack weeks or months in some cases. That’s really when it’s been trying times and challenging, but there’s been a lot of good moments too.”

Landeskog played on a deteriorating knee during the 2022 playoffs, and the reward was lifting the Stanley Cup for the team he dreamed of playing for when he was a kid. The stuff of fairytales.

What came next was anything but. He’d already had two procedures done on his knee by the 2022 playoffs. He had another in the fall of 2022, but that one didn’t fix the issues, either.

After missing all of the 2022-23 season, he had the knee cartilage replacement done on May 10, 2023. The Avs announced he would miss the entire 2023-24 regular season.

Landeskog said that the lowest moments came during that first season, early on in what is now a process into its 34th month.

“There’s been a few. I’m not gonna share all the depressing moments,” he said. “That’s when I had the most questions. That’s when I really didn’t know where things were going. That’s when I didn’t even know what the next week looked like.

“… There were some challenging times where you just like, you don’t even know how to get through the next 5-10 minutes. And I don’t know if that’s … I’m not going to throw out any big words or anything, but obviously it’s been challenging mentally at times. So you just lean on your support system for those moments.”

Shortly before having the surgery, and then for a long time after, Landeskog connected about once a month with Lonzo Ball of the Chicago Bulls, who also had the surgery and recently became the first NBA player ever to return from it.

Other NHL players, including Marc Methot, have had the procedure done but weren’t able to get back. Landeskog said he knew Methot had the surgery but wanted to keep his circle small and hadn’t talked to him.