After a good week of practice, the Colorado Avalanche headed north to begin another weekend back-to-back versus Canadian foes. First up was the always tough test Edmonton Oilers with their duo of elite forwards.

What wasn’t tough, however, was Edmonton’s goaltending who between Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard gave up nine goals on 34 shots to give Cale Makar, Parker Kelly, Nathan MacKinnon and Jack Drury multi-goal contributions in this 9-1 torching in the favor of the league leading Colorado Avalanche.

A furious pace broke out right from the start as both teams had ample rest going into this matchup. As such, the teams traded early power plays before the halfway mark of the first period. Since neither team scored, two more penalties were awarded and the teams skated on a four-on-four with no result.

Despite this, it was the visitors who broke through first as Cale Makar unleashed a vintage rifle just above the right circle to put Colorado up 1-0. The best defenseman in the world wasn’t done as he got an open look off of a faceoff and fired the exact same shot from above the right circle to score again just over a minute later.

Before the end of the period it appeared Captain Gabe Landeskog scored his first goal of the season (again) and it was taken away by a review and offside call (again). Edmonton netminder Stuart Skinner must have been glad the goal got called back because it was one he certainly would want to have another chance at saving. Two more power plays for Colorado including a lengthy 5-on-3 couldn’t put the goal back on the board so the first period ended 2-0 in Colorado’s favor.

Five minutes into the second period the Avalanche doubled their lead. First, Gavin Brindley, back in the lineup after clearing concussion protocol, cleaned up some loose change in front of the net off of a Sam Malinski shot. Two minutes later Jack Drury deposited a shot from Brent Burns at the net front.

At this point Edmonton opted to put old friend Calvin Pickard in net, probably five minutes too late for Skinner’s sake. But it didn’t take long for he, too, to give up a goal. This time Brindley set up Parker Kelly after Pickard overplayed the pass and vacated his net for Colorado’s fifth goal of the evening. Edmonton got a mercy goal from Connor McDavid and busted Scott Wedewood’s shutout bid for a momentary glimmer of hope.

Even if Colorado can’t score on their own power play, they can score on Edmonton’s as Parker Kelly thwarted Pickard once again but this time on a shorthanded breakaway. After 40 minutes the Avalanche held a commanding 6-1 lead.

The third period was the Nathan MacKinnon show as he put two goals past Pickard in short order. First tally came 24 seconds into the frame on a breakaway. Then just under five minutes later as he exited the penalty box MacKinnon received a stretch pass from Ross Colton and beat the Oilers goaltender again. After a fruitless four minutes of power play time, Jack Drury struck again to put up Colorado’s ninth goal of the evening if we are still even counting them. And that’s how this melee ended, in a 9-1 Avalanche victory.

Remarkably four Avalanche players crafted a two-goal game each in this contest but no hat trick was achieved. After Makar got two on the board the first few minutes of the game it seemed like he was in good position to get the third tally but his teammates joined in on the fun. For those that lost count those multi-goal scorers were Cale Makar, Parker Kelly, Nathan MacKinnon and Jack Drury with a single Gavin Brindley goal mixed in. It was a good mix of superstar and depth contributions.

Once again Colorado was able to neutralize Edmonton’s attack and limited the league darling duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to only one power play goal where they each picked up a single point. Goaltending will be the gripe out of Edmonton after this one and they made it easy on Colorado with nine goals given up on 34 shots but the Avalanche did a good job to halt any Oilers attempt at a comeback.

Good thing the Avalanche didn’t need a power play goal to pick up the two points in this contest as they spent nearly 12 minutes and officially went 0/7 on the man advantage. We analyzed earlier that the power play was showing signs of life heading into this game. To be fair, this matchup was over early and the power play time in the third period especially was already garbage time. Though, to not convert on the lengthy 5-on-3 does give some concern. But in games like this thankfully that didn’t matter as the Avalanche abused Edmonton’s goaltending early and often at 5-on-5.

A quick turn around to tomorrow night in Vancouver to face the Canucks at 8 p.m. MT. Hopefully Colorado didn’t use up their quota of goals for the weekend.