The Avalanche did pretty much what it needed to on this five-game homestand

Ten points were possible. Eight points were achieved. For this five-game Avalanche homestand, that’ll work.

I said before this homestand started that anything less than seven points would be a failure, given what I feel is a very important time of the season and given the level of quality competition on it. After the first two games, I wasn’t feeling so great about the Avs’ chances of hitting that benchmark, as the first two games were overtime losses to Pittsburgh and Dallas.

But the Avs did what they had to in the final three, which was: win. They capped the homestand off with a win over the Detroit Red Wings at the Pepsi Center on Martin Luther King Day, and thus go into the NHL All-Star break breathing much easier in the Western Conference standings. Eight out of 10 points works just fine.

Instead of being a little too close to that Wild Card riffraff lower in the Western standings, the Avs go into Tuesday with an eight-point lead on the fourth-place team in the Central Division, which right now is a tie between Chicago and Winnipeg (62-54). They have a four-point lead on Dallas for that second-place spot in the division, which is important, because a top-two finish in the division would give the Avs home-ice advantage in a playoff round for the first time since…gulp…2014, against Minnesota. That’s a long time for a franchise that once looked upon home-ice advantages in the postseason as a practical birthright.

There might have been a few fluttering hearts among Avs fans after that first period today. The awful Red Wings – a team that is on pace to have fewer points than the 48 of that disastrous 2016-17 Avs team – had a 1-0 lead, with Jimmy Howard looking more like Georges Vezina.

But, then, normalcy returned not long after the puck drop to start the second. Nazem Kadri and Nathan MacKinnon – with primary assists on each goal by the Wiz Kid, Cale Makar – scored within the first three minutes of the period for a 2-1 lead and the Avs would never trail again. The rest of the game was a goal-scoring party, mostly for the Avs. The game was capped off by MacKinnon getting his 30th goal by the all-star break.

Thirty goals in the first 49 games. That works. I asked MacK afterward if that number of goals, this soon in the season, surpassed even his lofty expectations?

“Naw. I shoot a lot of pucks, so I gotta score,” MacKinnon said. “I got a lot of help. It’s nice to be on a really good team. That makes it easy. You get cheesy goals like I did tonight, like the empty-netter. But if you don’t win games, you don’t get those, so that’s all about the team, doing really well.”

Speaking of people who did really well by the all-star break: Ryan Graves.

Are you kidding me with these numbers: 47 games played, eight goals, 19 points and a league-leading +34? What???

I asked Jared Bednar afterward if Graves is now a legit “top-two” defenseman in this league, a kid who was still in the minors not much earlier than this time last year?

“Well, he is for us,” Bednar said.

Fair point. Graves had another bomb of a slapshot goal today, the goal that put to rest any crazy Detroit hopes of an upset today. You can legitimately make a case that Graves could have made the Western Conference all-star team, the way he played in those first 47.

Bottom line: Avs fans can go into this break feeling much better about things than just a few days ago, when they blew that game to Dallas and fell to third place in the division.

Just like in the game today, it feels like things are finally getting back to normal.

NOTES AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS

• Kadri had his best game in quite a while, with the two goals, one assist and 11-for-15 on faceoffs (73 percent). That works.
• Tyson Jost had a very good game, too. He had a great pass to Matt Nieto for what proved the game-winning goal, at 5:12 of the third period. Jost finished with five shots on net.
• Pavel Francouz? A bit wobbly looking today. It sure helps, though, when your team scores six goals for you.
• The first power-play unit of Kadri, MacKinnon, Makar, Landeskog and Rantanen was reunited for this game and the Avs went 1-for-5 overall. They looked pretty good overall, though the Red Wings have a brutal PK and overall defense.
• Nikita Zadorov had two assists, which helped make up for a ghastly turnover early in the game that led to Detroit’s first goal.
• The Stadium Series jerseys went on sale today, and I went into the team store to gauge how sales were going. Very well, I was told. When I asked, they had just gone into their third re-stocking on the racks. I bought a Landeskog jersey for my son. $245 – OUCH.
• It appears all but certain Joonas Donskoi will return to the Avs lineup when they resume their schedule, Feb. 1 in Philadelphia.
• Another really good Corsi flow chart for the Avs in this one:

• Guess which forward on the Avs has the best plus-minus at the All-Star break? If you guessed Valeri Nichushkin, at +18, go to the head of the class.
• Here are your video highlights