DENVER — Are you sure this needs to be a best-of-seven series?

Asking for the Predators.

Gas prices being what they are, maybe the NHL can skip the pricey flights back to Nashville. You know, save a few bucks. It’s clear how this one will go. Game 1 Tuesday at Ball Arena didn’t need much explanation as the Avalanche smashed the Predators 7-2. It needed a mercy rule.

Game 2 is here Thursday. Hope it’s competitive, at least. But maybe Flames coach Darryl Sutter was on to something when he evaluated the Avs this way: “If you are a wild card team I sure as hell don’t want to play Colorado in the first round. It’s going to be a waste of eight days.”

Game 1 wasn’t a waste. It was a jaw-dropping reminder how good a healthy Avs team really is. During the regular season, Colorado scored at least seven goals in nine games, the most by a team since 1995-96 — when the Avalanche won their first Stanley Cup. Not saying. Just saying.

I know, I know. Strange things happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Wild card teams often enjoy deep playoff runs. Hot goalies carry teams through entire brackets. Grown men cruise the Ball Arena concourse wearing “Scream” masks. Actually, that guy was kind of scary.

What’s scary from a Nashville perspective is that its starting goalie didn’t make it out of the first period of Game 1. The Avs behaved as if they have a bone to pick with hot chicken, scoring five goals only 15 minutes, 4 seconds, into a first-round series. Shoot, I think they just scored again! Nathan MacKinnon one-timer, boom. Devon Toews breakaway, boom. Andrew Cogliano, you thief! Shorthanded, the new guy stole the puck and dumped it past Predators goalie David Rittitch.

The fourth goal came off the stick of Cale Makar, a real beauty where he zipped past a defender, the fifth from Artturi Lehkonen. It was 5-0, and the Zamboni hadn’t made an appearance. Ball Arena got so loud I had McNichols flashbacks.

In the first 10 minutes of the series, the Avs scored at even strength, on the power play and shorthanded — the first time that’s happened in the playoffs. Not the first time for the Avalanche. The first time for anybody. So that’s what a healthy Avalanche team looks like, huh?

Good luck with that, Nashville. Hey, you won’t find me knocking one of America’s great cities. A couple years ago when the Avs lost to the Preds in a playoff series, I was crushing some of that delicious barbecue with good buddy Mark Kiszla in one of those country bars. A much younger person asked if we were in a band. I asked what kind of band would we be in. She sized us up good (and aged us up better): “Classic rock?”

Ouch.

Game 1 was an ouch if you’re the Predators. But it didn’t answer the burning question that’s hovered over the Avalanche in the playoffs: How will they respond when things don’t go well?

The Avs are good as gold when they’re ahead. It’s when they fell behind that things get sticky. That was true in each of their second-round flameouts the past three years. Who knows how this version will respond when faced with the inevitable series deficit? They won’t find out in this series.

Colorado coach Jared Bednar said before puck drop his guys were “jacked up” for the playoffs.

Gosh, no kidding. This was a show to remember. This was how you jumpstart a real Cup run.

Kinda felt bad for Preds goalies David Rittich and Connor Ingram, the backup and the backup-to-the-backup. (Top goalie Juuse Saros is out with an injury.) Rittitch seems like an excellent man thanks to his work to raise autism awareness. And Ingram’s one funny dude, revealing on his Twitter account that he “was once dumped over text in a group chat with his mom.”

But I know one thing for sure: it won’t be a backup goalie that figures out how to stop the Avs.

The score was 6-0 before the Preds finally got one in the net. I missed the goal from up in the press box because I was counting up Makar’s points in the first period (three), Mikko Rantanen’s assists (three), MacKinnon goals (two) and wondering why Russell Wilson skipped the best show in town. The new Broncos star has been everywhere else.

“You don’t want to give any team in a playoff series any hope,” Rantanen said during an in-game interview.

Bless their hearts, there is no hope for Nashville in this series. I think the Avs just scored again.