What's integral to the Avs success is having good two-way forwards across the whole 4 lines, they skate well, they compete at a high degree, they backcheck relentlessly, and always on the puck. Bednar turned Nate from a one-dimensional volume shooter who took poor shots into a driver who backchecks like a madman. Castoffs like Nuke or Calvert are given roles they fit well, Nuke was turned into a defensive specialist, a guy who uses his speed and size to hound defensemen on the forecheck and backchecks like crazy turning him into a top tier defensive winger, Calvert was an emotional leader whose energy set the tone and they try to replace guys like that with others who play a similar game - O'Connor, Ranta ... The most lethargic players on the roster are probably Compher and Kadri and even they aren't soft.
They also don't throw away the puck needlessly, dump and chase is the last resort. You attack the neutral zone with speed, penetrate it and outnumber the defense. What their speed also does is it forces the defensive pair to sit back which allows easier entry, and if you try to defend the blue line they have sets that allow Nate and others to get behind the D for odd-man rushes.
But the most important thing, that they lacked in the past, is having viable puck-moving defensemen on every single pairing. They even have multiple high-end ones per single pairing. And every single one of them is at worst an above-average defender as well when talking about the top 4. With how they are playing now they have Makar, Girard and Toews who are all high-end transition D and while Graves isn't a prototypical puck-mover and people see his size they tend to think of someone who sits back, he's at his best when given a bit of a free roam. He can be frustrating and a bit too confident in which cases Makar or another defensive partner actually stays back while Graves pinches or carries. Then you have Timmins who had struggled at times this season, but started to play better as time went on, as another guy who can move the puck effectively. McDonald is an interesting option for Seattle, because both his analytics and the eye test suggest he is a pretty damn good NHL D, albeit a late bloomer. The only regular with below-average - he is quite poor actually - puck skills is Nemeth, whose role is to eat minutes on PK and play a low event game at ES. If Byram or EJ feature back in you'd get:
Graves - Makar
Girard - Toews
Byram - Timmins/EJ
Nemeth - McDonald
That's an absurd amount of PMDs who are all very good in their own end. Even if EJ doesn't come back from his concussion and Graves is lost in the ED you had all of that plus Barron and Helleson.
