Ian Laperriere understandably had the Wild locker room all fired up after this one, which sets the stage for a fiery Western Conference quarterfinal.

The Avs tough-guy — 161 fights — landed about five punches on Marian Gaborik — first NHL fight in 485 games — at the end of overtime.

Here’s the fight on wildenforcers.com website.

This all started midway through the third when Laperriere waited for a rare Gaborik shift without Todd Fedoruk on the ice. He grabbed hold of Gaborik’s stick, basically got him in a collar and drove him hard into the glass. Gaborik punched back and both got roughings.

Then, at the end of OT, and knowing full well there were only skilled guys on the ice, Laperriere went right back after Gaborik — clearly to get in his head during the first round.

After the game, Gaborik had a bunch of bloody knuckles, but he’ll be OK.

But Derek Boogaard, who was scratched, made it clear he expects to play Game 1, and you know now he will.

There will be lots of coverage in the upcoming papers to prime everybody for the series, but this is not the same Colorado team the Wild munched on all year.

Adam Foote’s here, and playing well. And Peter Forsberg looks tremendous. He’s got three three-assist games in his last four now and 12 points in his last five, with a plus-8 to go with that.

The Avs’ forwards easily danced around the Wild end all night, and the Wild will have to figure out a way to shut down their firepower.

One thing’s for sure: the Wild should get lots of chances because Colorado takes risks around the net and turnovers can lead to odd-man rushes.

But it’ll be a difficult series.

As of now, the schedule has not been released by the NHL. I’ll be back on later. I’m going to head back to the hotel now because I’ve got lots of work ahead tonight.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Kent will update from Wild practice, I’m going to head to Colorado’s practice out here and will offer update from there.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.