Forget the Macarena, the jitterbug and the twist.

If you’re an Avalanche fan and not up on the “bang bang” dance, well, you’re just too square, man.

The dance craze sweeping Avs Nation is a brief, five-second-or-so step-off between centers Matt Duchene and Paul Stastny, performed immediately after a victory. It got its inspiration from the CBS television comedy “How I Met Your Mother,” specifically episode 17, season 5, which aired March 8.

Though explaining the dance from the episode’s plot line is complicated, and a little risque, Stastny and Duchene enjoy the dance simply because it’s fun, and funny.

“I love the show and I got Dutchy hooked on it, and pretty soon we started talking about different episodes and we both thought that one was hilarious, so we started kind of goofing off with it in the locker room and pretty soon we started doing it after wins,” Stastny said. “I really don’t even know how we started doing the dance and how it got on the ice.”

The bang bang dance between Stastny and Duchene began late last season but didn’t catch on until the past couple weeks, during the Avs’ current red-hot winning streak. The first try at the bang bang came March 16 in St. Louis. Eight days after the episode aired, after a 5-3 win over the Blues at the Scottrade Center, the young players figured, “Why not?” and made their first effort.

The duo kept doing it, but it stayed under the radar until Duchene, on his new Twitter account, last week posted a YouTube video of the dance from the series’ episode to explain the history. Now, it’s becoming a full-fledged phenomenon, with Avs message boards lighting up with the dance’s “lyrics” — “Bang bang, a bangity bang, I said a bang bang bangity bang” — and fans looking forward to the quick postgame celebration.

“Once that video got out there, others started picking it up and we’re definitely getting asked more about it,” Duchene said.

The dance goes against the grain in hockey, which has a culture of modesty, i.e. no “showboating.” The most outlandish display from players after victories usually involves a soft fist-bump and a tap of the goalie’s pads. But this is 2010, and youngsters such as Duchene, 19, and Stastny, 24, want to bring a little more of a party atmosphere to the frozen pond.

“We’re not trying to show anybody up on the opposition,” Duchene said. “Usually the other team won’t even see it anyway. Some teams do stuff after wins — I think (Alex) Burrows and (Roberto) Luongo did something in Vancouver — so it’s not a big deal. We just want to have fun and stay loose as a team.”

The actual dance steps done by Stastny and Duchene seem like a cross between the Texas two-step and John Travolta’s finger-pointing finish in “Saturday Night Fever.” The pair cap the dance with a high-five.

“The less I try to think about it, the easier it is for me to do,” Stastny said. “If I tried to explain it, I think I’d forget all of it. I don’t really know how we got the steps started; just pretty spontaneous. I don’t even think half our team knew we were doing it for a long time.”

Said Duchene: “I had never seen the show before until Paulie told me about it, because we have different TV in Canada. I started watching it with my family over the Olympic break (last year) and they loved it. Now I download every episode from iTunes.”

Duchene’s mother, Chris, said fans shouldn’t expect her son to sign up for “Dancing with the Stars” anytime soon — not that he was a total stranger to making moves without skates.

“The only other time I’ve seen him dance was when he copied the video on YouTube of ‘The Evolution of Dance’ (by Judson Laipply),” Chris Duchene said. “But he was pretty good at it.”

The more the Avs win, the better Duchene and Stastny will get at the bang bang.

“It kind of gives us some motivation out there,” Stastny said.

Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com

Notebook

Kings: Los Angeles is coming off a 3-2 loss at Chicago on Sunday night. . . . Before that loss, L.A. had scored 15 goals in the previous three games. . . . Tonight’s game marks the end of a five-game road trip for the Kings, who are 2-2-0 so far.

Avalanche: Center Matt Duchene was named the NHL’s No. 1 star of the week Monday, and linemate Tomas Fleischmann was given the second star. Duchene had seven points in four games, including two game-winning goals, and Fleischmann has five goals and 11 points in nine games since coming over from Washington. . . . The Avs, who did not practice Monday, have won six consecutive games.