After a four-point per­for­mance Wednes­day in Colorado’s 7–1 rout to elim­i­nate the Ari­zona Coy­otes, Nathan MacK­in­non now leads the NHL in play­off scor­ing with 13 points (four goals).

The Avalanche super­star has points in all eight of the team’s post­sea­son games and is clos­ing in on the club record points streak to begin a play­off of 10, set by Joe Sakic in the Avs’ inau­gur­al sea­son of 1995–96.

MacKinnon’s eight-game streak is tied with Sakic (1997–98), Peter Fors­berg and Milan Hej­duk (both 2000-01) for sec­ond to begin a playoff.

MacK­in­non is the sec­ond Avalanche play­er with four points in a series-clinch­ing game, join­ing Claude Lemieux in Game 6 of the 1997 con­fer­ence quar­ter­fi­nals. MacK­in­non had a hand in all three of Colorado’s sec­ond-peri­od goals Wednes­day, tying his own club record for three points in a play­off period.

MacK­in­non, 24, is play­ing in his fourth NHL post­sea­son. He was a rook­ie in 2014 when the Avs were upset by Min­neso­ta in the first round. Col­orado lost in the first round to Nashville in 2018 and came a win shy of advanc­ing to the West­ern Con­fer­ence finals in the spring last year against San Jose.

“Things have changed a lot,” since he was an 18-year-old rook­ie in 2014, MacK­in­non said Wednesday.

“We were just try­ing to claw into the play­offs (from 2015–19) and the last two years it was just a cel­e­bra­tion to make the play­offs. Last year was a huge deal that we beat Calgary.”

He now feels like the Avs could be the team to beat. And he’s not alone.

“The group that we have in that lock­er room, there’s a lot of char­ac­ter and obvi­ous­ly we’ve seen the prod­uct we can put on the ice,” Avs cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog said. “When we do our job and work togeth­er as a group, and work for one anoth­er, we can do some real­ly good things.”

Foot­notes. The Avalanche fin­ished 3‑for‑4 on the pow­er play to fin­ish 7‑for-20 (35%) in the series. The sev­en pow­er-play goals are the club’s most since 2001, when it had sev­en against St. Louis in the con­fer­ence finals. … Col­orado is now 11–2 when lead­ing 3–1 in a play­off series. … Andre Burakovsky had two assists in Game 5 and now the 2018 Stan­ley Cup cham­pi­on has a career-high eight post­sea­son points. … Cale Makar had an assist Wednes­day and now has a post­sea­son career-best sev­en points.

Longest point streaks to start play­off year, club history
10 Joe Sakic (1995–96)
8 Nathan MacK­in­non (2019–20)
8 Peter Fors­berg (2000–01)
8 Milan Hej­duk (2000–01)
8 Joe Sakic (1996–97)
7 Peter Fors­berg (2003–04)
7 Peter Fors­berg (1998–99)