Nathan MacKinnon’s sea­son for the ages has offi­cial­ly set a new stan­dard for the Col­orado Avalanche franchise.

MacK­in­non had a pair of assists Thurs­day night in Game No. 82 at Ball Are­na to help the Avs cruise past the under­manned Edmon­ton Oil­ers in a 5–1 win. He fin­ished the sea­son with 51 goals and 140 points. That is one more than Peter Stastny’s 139 points dur­ing the 1981–82 sea­son, when the fran­chise played in Que­bec City.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” MacK­in­non said. “(He’s) def­i­nite­ly a leg­end. Peter Stast­ny is one of the best to ever play. He had some crazy sea­sons. I think he had a lot bet­ter sea­sons than me over­all, this is just one. I think it’s a team accom­plish­ment. A lot of guys helped me out along the way.”

The win is also No. 50 on the sea­son for the Avs. Col­orado fin­ished the sea­son with 107 points (50–25‑7), good for eighth place in the NHL stand­ings but third in the Cen­tral Divi­sion. The Avalanche will begin the Stan­ley Cup Play­offs on Sun­day night with Game 1 at Cana­da Life Cen­ter against the Win­nipeg Jets, who fin­ished with 110 points. The Jets beat the Avs in all three meet­ings this season.

Nei­ther the Avalanche nor the Oil­ers had any­thing to play for at a team lev­el. Edmon­ton rest­ed its top sev­en scor­ers, includ­ing Con­nor McDavid and Leon Drai­saitl. The Avs, mean­while, iced its reg­u­lar line­up, save for Jus­tus Annunen in net for starter Alexan­dar Georgiev.

It did not take long for MacK­in­non to claim the record. Col­orado scored four times in the open­ing 10:17, and MacK­in­non assist­ed on two of them.

Valeri Nichushkin opened the scor­ing 79 sec­onds in, his first goal since March 22. He recent­ly missed four games with a low­er-body injury.

Mikko Ranta­nen scored his 42nd of the sea­son at 5:48 of the first. MacK­in­non had the sec­ondary assist, giv­ing him point No. 139.

The record-break­er came less than two min­utes lat­er. Nichushkin direct­ed MacKinnon’s shot into the net from the edge of the crease for his sec­ond of the night and career-best 28th of the year.

“It’s amaz­ing,” Avs coach Jared Bed­nar said of MacK­in­non reach­ing 140. “You think of all the amaz­ing play­ers who have come through this orga­ni­za­tion, the sea­sons they have, the suc­cess they’ve had as indi­vid­u­als and as a team. To be at the top of that list, I think it’s incredible.”

Cale Makar had an assist on the play as well, giv­ing him 90 points. That is also a fran­chise record for points by a defense­man, top­ping his pre­vi­ous mark of 86 set two years ago.

Josh Man­son made it a 4–0 lead mid­way through the first, but the over­matched Oil­ers did pre­vent this from becom­ing a far­ci­cal score­line after that.

Annunen had lit­tle work ear­ly on, but fin­ished his with 24 saves. He had just four games of NHL expe­ri­ence before this sea­son, but took over as the club’s back­up goalie just before the All-Star break and fin­ished with an 8–4‑1 record in 14 appearances.

Zach Parise, who told The Den­ver Post on Wednes­day this would be his final NHL reg­u­lar-sea­son game, scored goal No. 434 of his career to make it a 5–1 lead. Parise, who will turn 40 in July, came out of semi-retire­ment to join the Avs in late January.

Parise also scored in his NHL debut for New Jer­sey against Sid­ney Cros­by, also in his first game, and Pitts­burgh to open the 2005-06 sea­son. Ross Colton, who grew up in New Jer­sey and count­ed the ex-Dev­ils star as one of his favorite play­ers, set up Parise’s goal.

“It was spe­cial. I’m not going to lie,” Parise said. “It was a lot of dif­fer­ent feel­ings and thoughts going through your head all day long. To get one, and a great pass from Ross, it was pret­ty awesome.

“Hon­est­ly, it feels like (the first one) was last week. It’s crazy how fast it goes by.”

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