After Friday night’s 6–0 demolition of the 10-man Colorado Rapids, it’s time to consider an increasingly clear reality: the 2014 LA Galaxy aren’t just the best team in MLS this season, they’re starting to look like one of the best teams in MLS history.

Since the league’s inception in 1995, just one team has managed a goal differential of +30 or better. Yet the Galaxy are currently sitting at +27 —already the third-best mark ever — with eight games to go. Moreover, they’re in the type of red-hot form that suggests even +40 isn’t out of the question. After accruing just nine points and a +1 goal differential in their first eight games, the Galaxy have responded by reeling off 40 points from their last 18, a best-in-MLS-history rate of 2.22 points per game with a lofty accompanying goal differential of +26 — almost a goal and a half per match.

To understand the primary source of LA’s greatness, look no further than the attacking holy trinity of Robbie Keane, Landon Donovan, and Gyasi Zardes. Donovan and Keane are first and second in MLS in assists, respectively, and Zardes and Keane are tied for third in goals, with Donovan at 14th. While all three players are outstanding individual talents, it is their telepathic interplay in the final third that has brought out the best in each of them and propelled the Galaxy to historically dominant status in 2014.

LA’s attacks generally switch from “standard” to “lethal” when either Keane or Donovan gets involved in the final third. Both players draw an incredible amount of attention from opposing defenders (whether they have the ball or not), which opens up gobs of space for their teammates in dangerous areas. It helps that both Keane and Donovan are brilliant passers in tight spaces — hence their league-leading status in assists — with one often assisting the other. Zardes is the pair’s other favorite target: the young homegrown forward has scored 13 goals in LA’s last 15 games, with almost all of them assisted by Keane or Donovan.

Watch how it all comes together on this outrageous passing sequence against Chivas USA late last month.

Both centerbacks are flying towards Donovan as Baggio Husidic’s pass rolls toward him. But Donovan opts for a brilliant dummy — a team-wide trademark of the Galaxy ever since Keane arrived in 2011 — leaving the centerbacks out of position and flat-footed as they square up to Keane. Recognizing the defenders’ error, as well as the clever run from Donovan, Keane then plays a gorgeous first-time through ball into Donovan’s path. Ever unselfish, the U.S. legend rolls it across the six-yard box to Zardes, who, recognized the developing play far better than Chivas right back Akira Kaji, finishes with the simplest of tap-ins.

The above goal is anything but a one-time thing, though. For starters, the Galaxy are an outstanding passing team, as Opta’s Devin Pleuler shows:

And from that, the Galaxy — helped by an ever-increasing chemistry in the final third — have been scoring goals like the above a lot lately. Just one example can be seen in this frighteningly clinical Donovan-to-Zardes combo on Friday night, highlighted by Zardes’s newfound affinity for the type of dummies that Keane and Donovan so enjoy.

Zardes’s emergence has been the catalyst for LA’s jump from elite to historically dominant. He didn’t provide a single goal in the Galaxy’s mediocre opening eight games, but he’s scored 14 times since, leading to ever louder calls for a USMNT call-up.

As Matthew Doyle suggests, Zardes deserves credit, not scorn, for thriving alongside Keane and Donovan. Along with his finishing, Zardes’s movement off the ball has improved dramatically from last season, which helps explain why his goal tally has risen from four in 27 appearances in 2013 to 14 in 24 this time around. Sure, the brilliance of Keane and Donovan helps, but it would be foolish to dismiss the homegrown forward’s huge role in his own success.