SUNDAY'S 104-point drubbing of Melbourne leaves Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson with "no doubt" the club's depth has improved.

With five of the Hawks’ starting 22 out of the side due to suspension or illness, and with key defender Trent Croad off to hospital early in the first term, the Hawks began their season opener decidedly undermanned.

But Clarkson says a tough pre-season has combined with a coming-of-age of recent draftees to boost the side’s capacity to cope with injury.

"For the first time since I've been at the club, we've had really good numbers on the track with a really good percentage of the amount of work they've been able to do," Clarkson said after the game.

"Every player that we played today had in excess of 80 per cent of the pre-season in terms of volume, and early in the season you need to pick fit blokes that are able to run.

"I thought we saw the benefit of that today."

Clarkson was particularly excited by club debutants Stuart Dew, Cameron Stokes and Cyril Rioli.

Rioli and Stokes, he said, would continue "give us electricity in our forward line".

"They all got on the scoreboard which is pleasing in terms of kicking a goal, but particularly for ‘Dewy’, we expected him to play well," Clarkson said.

"He's an experienced campaigner, he knows what it's all about, and we as a football club and he as an individual had enormous confidence that he'd be able to prepare himself in the right manner and be able to get himself right for round one.

"He's done what we expected him to do. It's round one, he's got a long way to go for his fellow players to understand how he best plays, but he's on the right track today."

Keen to play down the scale of the Hawks’ win, Clarkson said he didn't expect his players to dominate as they did.

"Never in your preparation for a game do you anticipate a game is going to open up like it did in the second half," he said.

"We were really pleased in our endeavours and our efforts, and we really set the pattern for the game early on.

"I can remember saying at match committee throughout the week that given it was the season, just to be pleased to win by a goal, we would have been happy with.

"So, to perform like we did was really pleasing. But it's round one.

"I know you're going to expect that I'll try and play down things a little bit, but we've got a long way to go. We've got a six-day break and we play Fremantle on the rebound at Subiaco next Saturday.

"We've just got to be as quick as we can and try and recover from this game because the MCG was as hard a surface as I've ever seen it and we need to recover for next week's game."