ALTHOUGH he was reluctant to rave too much about his team's 73-point hammering of Gold Coast on Saturday night, it was apparent Paul Roos knows he now has a good team on his hands.

But as with praise from most senior coaches, it came with a caveat.

Roos said his team now believed that when they brought their best they'd "generally get a positive result".

But if they were just the slightest bit off – as they were against St Kilda last week and Essendon earlier in the year – they'd more than likely lose.

"We're certainly a team that's best is really really good, but we still haven't got a great margin for error," Roos said of his 4-3 Demons.

"We had 17 or 18 good players tonight. If we get that we're going to be a good team.

"Last week I think we had five or six, so there's still an understanding from our group that they all have to come and play well and if they do that we generally get a positive result."

Despite leading by just five points at half-time after a mountain of inside 50s, Roos said he was pleased with all four quarters.

"We were happy with the way we were playing, the game style, we probably just turned the ball over a little bit and that keeps the opposition energised," he said.

"They got reward for entries and we didn't get reward for ours, but we felt we were playing the way we wanted to play.

"We talked a lot about continuing to run, continuing to work hard and the second half was obviously very good."

At the top of the list was ruckman Max Gawn, who dominated from the opening bounce.

Gawn finished with 17 disposals, 46 hitouts and kicked 2.3 in a best on ground display.

His clean taps to Jack Viney and Nathan Jones early in the third term for goals were the stuff ruckmen dream of.

Roos said when Melbourne's leaders played well, the rest of the team generally followed, and they had plenty of contributors against the Suns.

Jones (33 disposals) was not far behind Gawn as the Demons' best, while Bernie Vince (28) and Viney (24) were brilliant in the middle of the ground.

"When we get good contributions from leaders and all the way down, we think we're a good team."