MATTHEW Nicks has labelled Adelaide's 57-point win over the Western Bulldogs as their best performance of the year.

The Crows came out of the blocks firing, dominating the first quarter and kicking nine goals to the Dogs' two, the 41-point quarter-time margin setting up Adelaide's comfortable win.

BULLDOGS v CROWS Full match coverage and stats

"That's the most complete quarter we've played, or at least complete game I'd say, definitely this year," Nicks said.

"Really proud of the way they were able to focus on the task at hand, which wasn't an easy one."

Captain Jordan Dawson was key to the Crows' strong start, kicking three first-quarter goals as he continued his outstanding form this season.

The Bulldogs attempted to tag the in-form midfielder, but Dawson was unstoppable and finished with 32 disposals, three goals and 12 score involvements.

The Adelaide coach said he was in awe of his skipper's achievements, particularly after losing his brother earlier in the year.

"It's hard to put it into words, to be honest, about the pride you have in what he's currently doing and how he's going about it in what is a really tough time," Nicks said.

"You've seen occasionally the emotion come out publicly and it is tough still. But talk about focus. We challenged ourselves as a group to be focused.

"I can't imagine the challenges he's having with that at the moment, but footy and being on the field seems to be something that he's embracing and enjoying and doing it for his teammates. 

"He's always been an ultimate team player, which is why he's our captain."

In what was a near perfect game, the only issue to come from the Crows' impressive win was a hamstring injury to forward Luke Pedlar, who had started the game strongly with two goals.

"We hope that's going to be a minor one. Yeah, disappointing for us and for 'Peds'," Nicks said.

"He's an important piece and we know we're going to need him, but hopefully that won't be too long out of the game and he'll be available later through the year."

For Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge, he conceded that his side was unable to match it with the Crows or suppress Dawson's influence.

"I'm always one to give the opposition praise when you're impressed by their level of game and I thought all over the park they were impressive. We were second rate," Beveridge said.

"Today Matt (Kennedy) was assigned to Jordan in that first quarter and it's not all on Matt. Everyone needs to help him but he ran rampant.

"It's the flip side of something that works sometimes and doesn't at others. Sometimes it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. So as a collective we got better at that but Jordan Dawson's an outrageously good player."

Veteran midfielder Adam Treloar spent almost all of the third quarter on the interchange bench in an unconventional move that came as a surprise.

"We were working through who should be playing different roles and covering the ground in different ways and we thought we'd save Adam up for a run at it in the last quarter and he came on at the start of that last quarter and had an impact," Beveridge said.

"You're looking for output at different times and you make decisions throughout the course of the game and so we figured with Adam's profile at the moment that we'd look for a spike in the last quarter for him."