The ver­sion of the Col­orado Avalanche that can win the Stan­ley Cup this sea­son returned Sat­ur­day night at Ball Arena.

Col­orado played one of its best games in weeks, pro­duc­ing high­light-reel goals and rel­a­tive­ly clean hock­ey with­out the puck in a 4–1 win against the Ari­zona Coy­otes. Maybe the biggest rea­son for opti­mism was the Avalanche’s dom­i­nance in the sec­ond peri­od, which has been the club’s boogey­man at times this year.

The Avs entered the night with a minus-four goals dif­fer­en­tial in the sec­ond, a far cry from their pos­i­tive work over the course of the sea­son in the first and last peri­ods. Col­orado struck three times in the peri­od against Ari­zona, and all three tal­lies involved some excel­lent build-up play.

“Sec­ond peri­od might have been our most com­plete peri­od of the year,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “From the goal­tender out, I just thought we had the detail. … That’s what it is sup­posed to look like.”

Valeri Nichushkin scored on a back­hand­ed cross-ice pass from Nathan MacK­in­non ear­ly in the peri­od. It was a sur­gi­cal sequence from the top line and defense pair­ing, with MacK­in­non extend­ing his point streak to 18 games. It’s the longest of his career and the longest in the NHL this season.

One of the issues recent­ly for the Avs has been not enough offen­sive sup­port for the top line, which has been fan­tas­tic. They got it Sat­ur­day night.

Josh Man­son scored one of the best team-craft­ed goals of the sea­son to make it 3–0. It start­ed with goal­tender Alexan­dar Georgiev wait­ing out a forecheck­er and ignit­ing a rush with a deft out­let pass. It end­ed with Fredrick Olof­s­son find­ing Man­son as the trail­er for a bar-down wrist shot from near the top of the right circle.

Olfos­son put the final touch­es on a near-per­fect peri­od with a tap-in goal after a beau­ti­ful no-look, back­hand pass from Andrew Cogliano to give the Avs a 4–0 lead after 40 minutes.

One of the things that Bed­nar has stressed ad nau­se­am of late is atten­tion to detail and play­ing with­in the team’s struc­ture. He warned after the morn­ing skate Sat­ur­day that Ari­zona had a young, fast, skilled group that came to Den­ver as one of the hottest teams in the NHL, and his Avs would need to check well.

The first peri­od wasn’t a great one by Colorado’s stan­dards, but it was void of the big mis­takes and Grade A scor­ing chances that the Avs have been guilty of yield­ing over the past few weeks.

“I think every­one (checked), up and down our line­up,” said defense­man Bowen Byrem, who opened the scor­ing in the first peri­od. “There’s still mis­takes that hap­pen. It’s a game of mis­takes. But I think the biggest thing is when some­one made one, some­one else was work­ing hard enough to recov­er for them. That’s been a big part of our game the whole time I’ve been here.

“It was a lot of fun to play like that tonight when you have the puck and you’re dri­ving play. It makes it a lot more fun than run­ning around and defend­ing in the D‑zone.”

Then the sec­ond peri­od became a fire­works show. It wasn’t just the pret­ty goals. Miles Wood crushed Ari­zona defense­man J.J. Moser with a huge hit as they both raced toward the boards for a loose puck.

Wood and Coy­otes for­ward Law­son Crouse fought lat­er in the peri­od, but the Avs made sure the vis­i­tors derived no momen­tum from the donnybrook.

The Avs checked with­out the puck. They daz­zled with it, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a late sec­ond-peri­od pow­er play that had some of the pret­ti­est pass­ing sequences the group has pro­duced all sea­son. And Georgiev made a hand­ful of tough saves look rel­a­tive­ly easy.

Every NHL team spends months search­ing for the elu­sive 60-minute effort. This was pret­ty close to one for the Avalanche, and a reminder of why the ceil­ing for this group is a parade in June.

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