Nick Foligno celebrates his 800th game in style

Looking back, it seems like it had to be this way.
The consummate professional and team captain, Nick Foligno, playing in career game No. 800, just had to score the 30th game-winning goal of his career.
That it was the only goal in the Columbus Blue Jackets' 1-0 victory on Monday against the Vegas Golden Knights was even more fitting. And that he delivered his postgame interview sporting a new bright red mark on his cheek, courtesy of a cross-check into the glass that drew a penalty and cost him exactly zero seconds of playing time, also seemed oddly appropriate.

"It's never fun to get your face hammered into the glass," he said with a bit of a smile.
For that is Foligno's game. He's not afraid to mix it up - he added three hits to his career total of more than 1,000 on Monday night - and plays with a toughness that belies a scoring touch. The winning goal was his 177th career marker and his 418th career point.
And it was also fitting that after the game he wasn't really all that interested in talking about the milestone or his goal, focusing instead on the impact for the team.
"It's cool," he said. "I'm more just happy that we got the win. (800) games aside, I just wanted to help the team. It's always nice to get a game winner, especially when I felt like our line was doing a lot of good things. You look at the way we played tonight, it was nice to be able to get rewarded and help the team get a big win."
In addition to providing all the scoring, Foligno - who played with a new center for the evening in Alex Wennberg - filled out the stat sheet otherwise. In 18:40 of work, including power play and penalty kill time, he tied for the team lead with four shots and was 3-for-4 at the faceoff dot.

But his goal was the game's biggest turning point. On the opening shift of the third period, he had already had one good chance turned away by Vegas goalie Malcolm Subban, who got big to stop Foligno as he turned and fired 20 seconds into the period.
Foligno stayed with it though and got to the front of the net. There, he jumped over a wrist shot from the point by Seth Jones, found the puck when he landed, and quickly sent it past the blocker of Subban for the goal 40 seconds into the period for his eighth goal of the season.
"Jonesy made a nice play to put it on net and I was able to bang it home," Foligno said. "It feels good to help the boys."
While much of the focus after the game was about the games Foligno has played - don't forget his 31 playoff games, including his scoring the first-ever CBJ playoff game-winner at Nationwide Arena in 2014 - the former first-round pick said he was looking forward for more after the game.
"I want to stay in the league a lot longer," the 31-year-old said. "I'm not going to get too excited about it and just keep playing."
But if there was one number that sounded interesting to Foligno, it was 2,274. That's how many combined NHL regular-season games Nick, his brother Marcus, and their father Mike now have combined to play.
"I think we're just proud of the fact that we can stay in this league and do what we can to help our team," he said. "It's a testament I think to us as players and we stay relevant. That's what we want to do - be a big part of helping your team, and hopefully there's a lot more games to stay relevant in."