Next stop – Denver

The Avs top 6 is a formidable one, similar to the Oilers but the attack is a little more balanced. Whereas the Oilers top six forwards are led by two superstars, one star player in Evander Kane and three very good players, the Avs are led by three star players in Nathan Mckinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Gabriel Landeskog – all of whom finished at 30 goals or better in the regular season. Rantanen and Mckinnon finished 1-2 in Avs scoring in the regular season with 92 and 88 points respectively.

The rest of the top six is flanked by Artturi Lehkonen, who arrived at the trade deadline from Montreal and scored six goals and nine points in 16 games. Then there’s veteran Nazem Kadri, who has experienced a career renaissance this season since coming to the Avs from Toronto, putting up 28 goals and a career best 87 points – and this was on an 11.3 shooting %, only 0.1% higher than his career average, so those marks mean this guy is for real.

Valeri Nichushkin rounds it out – and he broke out as a sniper type scorer in a big way this year, scoring 25 goals and 52 points this year. Now bearing in mind that was with a 13.9% shooting %, which is 4.2% above his career average so he might be the one guy that on paper that’s a little mortal.

As you would expect, all of these players have continued this momentum into the playoffs in the first two rounds.

Either way, that’s still a lot of firepower. I have no doubt Jay Woodcroft will come up with a special strategy to shutdown this top six because these guys make Calgary look like a junior team. Any one of these players could burn you at anytime. I don’t know how the Oilers will defend against it, but it will be essential if they want to move onto the Cup finals.

There aren’t many teams that can match the Oilers firepower in the top six, but Colorado is one of them. Let’s call this a wash.