The Avalanche made two sig­nif­i­cant trades Wednes­day morn­ing to bol­ster their chances of win­ning the Stan­ley Cup this sea­son. Then the guys who are the biggest rea­son why they can win a sec­ond title in three years when out and put on a show against the Detroit Red Wings at Ball Arena.

Cale Makar had his first career hat trick, while he, Nathan MacK­in­non and Mikko Ranta­nen all had four-point games to help the short­hand­ed Avalanche blow by the Red Wings, 7–2.

“I haven’t had a hat trick since before juniors,” Makar said. “It was a long, long time before that. I’ve had a lot of two-goal games, but it was just a dif­fer­ent vibe tonight. It was pret­ty cool.”

Gen­er­al man­ag­er Chris Mac­Far­land shook up the ros­ter ear­li­er in the day with a pair of trades. The Avs added a new No. 2 cen­ter, Casey Mit­tel­stadt, from the Buf­fa­lo Sabres and right-hand­ed defense­man Sean Walk­er from the Philadel­phia Flyers.

Bo Byram went to Buf­fa­lo and Ryan Johansen was sent to Philadel­phia in the trans­ac­tions. The new guys didn’t arrive in Den­ver in time to play and for­ward Logan O’Connor was unavail­able because of an injury.

That left the Avalanche under­manned — Col­orado moved Caleb Jones into the line­up for Byram and recalled for­wards Jean-Luc Foudy and Ondrej Pavel to fill out the for­ward corps.

“It’s hec­tic, real­ly hec­tic,” MacK­in­non said of a day like this. “Tough to keep your mind focused. Bo is a great friend, tough to see him go. He’s such a great guy. We’ll miss his per­son­al­i­ty. Amaz­ing play­er. I’m excit­ed to see him devel­op in Buf­fa­lo. I think he’s going to be a stud.”

The big guns made sure the short­hand­ed line­up wasn’t a prob­lem. MacK­in­non became the first play­er to score 40 goals in back-to-back sea­sons for the fran­chise since it moved to Den­ver from Que­bec, while also grab­bing sole pos­ses­sion of the NHL scor­ing lead with 109 points — four more than Tam­pa Bay’s Niki­ta Kucherov.

Makar became the fourth defense­man to score a hat trick in fran­chise his­to­ry, and the first since San­dis Ozolinsh on Dec. 6, 1999. He now leads all NHL defense­men with 17 goals, and his 70 points is three shy of Vancouver’s Quinn Hugh­es for the league lead.

Ranta­nen reached 50 assists for the third con­sec­u­tive sea­son. He had four assists in this game, plus 16 shot attempts, the sec­ond-most he’s had all season.

The Red Wings scored on their first shot of the game less than two min­utes in, but both Red Wings goal­tenders were under siege for the final 58. The 54 shots on goal for the Avs was their most in a game this season.

“I loved the jump in our offen­sive game the whole night,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said. “The offen­sive game nev­er wavered. It’s some­thing we’ve been talk­ing about and work­ing on and I thought the guys were out­stand­ing tonight, and we got bet­ter in the sec­ond and third peri­od with our defending.”

Colorado’s top line and defense pair scored the first five goals for the Avs, before Jonathan Drouin made it 6–2 in the third peri­od with his sec­ond tal­ly in as many games. Foudy joined the scor­ing par­ty with his first career NHL goal at 15:25 of the third, by which point most of the red-clad Red Wings fans in atten­dance had left the premises.

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