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With time winding down in regulation on Sunday, Colorado Avalanche tough guy Ian Laperriere targeted Minnesota scorer Marian Gaborik and began a shoving match.

Things became more heated between the two at the end of overtime with both players drawing five-minute fighting majors in a game won 4-3 by Colorado to help it finish the season as the No. 6 seed in the NHL’s Western Conference.

Minnesota’s Marian Gaborik, left, and Ian Laperriere of the Avalanche are escorted to the penalty box in Sunday’s regular-season finale.
(Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Next up is a best-of-seven conference quarter-final against the Wild, who earned the third seed after winning the Northwest Division with 44 wins and 98 points. Game 1 is Wednesday at Minnesota (8 p.m. CT).

Perhaps the Laperriere-Gaborik mixup will inspire a Colorado team that hasn’t won in its last five visits to the Xcel Energy Center. The Avalanche, making their return to the Stanley Cup playoffs, also would like to avenge a first-round series loss to Minnesota in 2003.

“I love Gaborik standing up for himself and he’s going to have to because if you’re playing against Minnesota, he’s the only guy [the opposition] is going to focus on,” said Hockey Night in Canada analyst P.J. Stock of the Wild star, who was involved in his first NHL fight on the weekend.

Playoffs ‘a notch higher’: Laperriere

But if Gaborik, who set team records this season with 42 goals and 83 points, thinks Sunday’s punchup was rough, he hasn’t seen anything yet.

“The playoffs will be a notch higher,” Laperriere, who topped Colorado in penalty minutes this season with 140, told reporters Tuesday. “Teams and players that haven’t been physical all season will be physical. They will bring their physical play in the playoffs because if they want to win, that’s the way they need to play.”

Expect Wild coach Jacques Lemaire to answer Laperriere with six-foot-seven, 254-pound left-winger Derek Boogaard, who passed along a message to Laperriere through the media following Sunday’s contest: “Tell him I’m going to be there in Game 1.”

If this isn’t enough to get fans in Colorado excited, perhaps they can busy themselves by thinking about the offensive firepower and experience their team possesses.

The Avalanche can throw three scoring lines at Minnesota, featuring Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Milan Hejduk, Paul Stastny, Ryan Smyth, Wojtek Wolski and Andrew Brunette.

Sakic and Forsberg rank in the top 10 in playoff points per game, while Brunette has 26 points in 33 career playoff games.

As for experience, Sakic, Forsberg and defenceman Adam Foote helped Colorado to Stanley Cup championships in 1996 and 2001.

“You need experience and you can only get experience by playing,” said Sakic, who finished the regular season with five points in the final seven games. “At the [Feb. 26 trade] deadline, we got [defenceman] Ruslan [Salei] and he played in the [Stanley Cup] finals [with Anaheim in 2003].”

The question on many people’s minds is how healthy is Forsberg, who spent most of the season recovering from chronic foot problems before signing a free-agent contract with Colorado in late February.

Despite a late-season groin injury, he managed three assists on Sunday and had 14 points in nine games overall. With Forsberg in the lineup, the Avalanche had a 8-1 record. But they lost the season series to the Wild, going 3-4-1.

“I love Forsberg but physically, is he prepared for this grind?” wondered Stock. “A regular-season game is something different. Playoffs, you know he’s older (34).

“You’re going to bang him, you have to bang him. But the way he played [on Sunday], he not only gave himself confidence, but his teammates have confidence in him. He’s so important if this team’s going to have success.”

Rolston on Wild offence 

As for the Wild, considered one of the better teams at trapping up the middle, Brian Rolston will be counted on to shoulder more of the offensive load. He had two points in a five-game series loss to Anaheim a year ago.

“If Minnesota’s going to have any success, they’re going to have to get guys like Rolston and [fellow winger Pavol] Demitra playing a lot better,” Stock said. “I don’t know if they have the guns to get through Colorado.”

But the Wild do have a quality goaltender in Niklas Backstrom, who won a franchise-record 33 games this season and went 7-0-4 in his last 11 decisions. Avalanche counterpart Jose Théodore enjoyed a comeback season with 27 victories and a 2.44 goals-against average.

Minnesota defenceman Nick Schultz will miss the series after undergoing an appendectomy on Monday. The 25-year-old posted two goals, 17 points and a plus-9 rating in 81 games this season.

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