DENVER – Sixty minutes of first-rate hockey closed a home stand in which the Avalanche seemed to come into their own.

Colorado cruised to a sixth straight victory Saturday afternoon, 6-0, and finished a nine-game stretch at Ball Arena 7-1-1.

“We’re starting to put real strong performances together here in the course of this home stand,” coach Jared Bednar said. “I don’t know if there was a game that I didn’t like. There might have been a period or two.”

The Avalanche crushed the Minnesota Wild, who had won five straight coming in, by a combined 11-1 in this most recent two-game series. Colorado moved three points ahead of Minnesota in second place in the West Division, and has kept pace with the first-place Vegas Golden Knights, who have won five in a row.

Philipp Grubauer registered an assist and his NHL-leading fifth shutout of the season Saturday.

“Incredible work from everybody back there, sacrificing their own body to block shots and do the right things,” Grubauer said, singling out a penalty-kill shot block from Jacob MacDonald that could have muddied his clean sheet.

Cale Makar’s second goal of the season, and first since he returned from an upper-body injury that cost him 10 games, was a power-play shot from the high slot. No muss, no fuss, 1-0.

“Kind of saw that their goalie was peeking out on one side of our guy,” Makar said. “I just tried to rip it short side.”

Gabriel Landeskog’s shot hit the shoulder of Minnesota’s Kaapo Kahkonen (36 saves) and flipped up and over to make it 2-0. Landeskog (one goal, two assists) and MacKinnon (three assists) led in the points column, though there were six scorers.

“I like the fact that we’re playing good hockey throughout our lineup,” Bednar said. “There were no weak spots.”

Forty-six seconds into the second period, Mikko Rantanen put it away. He took the puck nearly end-to-end and put a shot off the crossbar and in for a 3-0 lead.

Tyson Jost one-timed a pass from Joonas Donskoi, then Devon Toews fired in a MacKinnon setup. Valeri Nichushkin came down the side, went in alone and put a move on Kahkonen to provide the only third-period goal and the final score.

“Here — this entire homestand, really — I think we’ve been real competitive and worked hard and really paid attention to all the little things that we talk about all the time,” Landeskog said.

“I think as a group we’ve done a good job of stepping up and realizing how big this home stand (was), what an opportunity it was for us.”

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