from Travis Yost of TSN,

How do you beat the Colorado Avalanche?

It’s a front-of-mind question for everyone in hockey right now. That’s how much fear the Avalanche can strike into a team.

Their skater group is the deepest and most talented in hockey. If you had any reservations about that claim a week ago, the Avalanche put an exclamation point on it by sweeping the lively Edmonton Oilers to reach the Stanley Cup Final.

When the Avalanche are playing at their best, they look superhuman. They have high-end, superstar-level talents in Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. The bulk of the lineup plays at a pace best described as frenetic. When the Avs are humming, they put most teams through the meat grinder.

This has been a sustained trend over time. No team has been more dominant than the Avalanche than the past three seasons, and that includes the (still alive) two-time Stanley Cup champions in Tampa Bay:

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