The Avalanche advanced to the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals with anoth­er dom­i­nat­ing 7–1 vic­to­ry over the Ari­zona Coy­otes at Rogers Place in Edmon­ton. Wednesday’s vic­to­ry mir­rored Monday’s 7–1 rout in the same build­ing and lands Col­orado in the sec­ond round for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year. Five takeaways:

1. A nice din­ner and buck­ets of beer were undoubt­ed­ly served at the team hotel Wednes­day night. But there prob­a­bly wasn’t a sub­stan­tial cel­e­bra­tion like the spring of 2019 when the Avs upset West­ern Con­fer­ence reg­u­lar-sea­son cham­pi­on Cal­gary in the first round. This year, it was expect­ed and Colorado’s only post­sea­son goal is to win the Stan­ley Cup. Win­ning a round doesn’t call for cel­e­bra­tion. The only major cel­e­bra­tion will occur if Col­orado wins the Cup.

Nathan MacK­in­non com­par­ing this team to a year ago, when #Avs felt for­tu­nate to beat Cal­gary in first round pic.twitter.com/zbYp3t0i53

— Mike Cham­bers (@MikeChambers) August 20, 2020

2. Sec­ond-line cen­ter Nazem Kadri had seven points (five goals) in the series and his four pow­er-play goals came at key times for the Avalanche. Tough to name a series MVP with Nathan MacK­in­non in the run­ning (10 points, three goals), but Kadri is cer­tain­ly in con­tention. Kadri didn’t com­mit a penal­ty in the series and was an offen­sive force.

3. Offen­sive chances and Grade‑A oppor­tu­ni­ties weren’t com­pa­ra­ble between the teams. The entire series. Colorado’s key to Game 5 was the same as in Game 4 — use its dom­i­nant speed and skill and push the pace from the first drop of the puck. The Coy­otes couldn’t keep up and took the first penal­ties in Game 5, result­ing in two Avalanche pow­er-play goals. And the Avs didn’t take their first penal­ty in Game 5 until the third period.

4. Shut­down defense­man Ian Cole led the Avalanche in ice time at 21:21 and MacK­in­non played a series-low 13:46. Those are ide­al num­bers for a con­fi­dent team that builds a big lead and knows it’s going to win.

5. The Avalanche is dom­i­nat­ing spe­cial teams. The pow­er play went 3‑of‑4 in Game 5 and the penal­ty kill was a per­fect 2‑for‑2. For the series, the Avs scored sev­en times with the man-advan­tage on 20 oppor­tu­ni­ties — a siz­zling 35% suc­cess rate.