Foligno providing big boost when Wild needs it most

ST. PAUL -- Not even three games into his Wild career, Marcus Foligno received a major reality check. It came via the right knuckle of Chicago Blackhawks forward John Hayden.
A summertime trade from Buffalo to Minnesota had given Foligno new confidence. In six seasons with the Sabres, Foligno had never played in a playoff game, and he was coming to a club in search of its sixth consecutive trip to the postseason. A brand new four-year contract had provided the 26-year-old and his wife Natascia -- expecting the couple's first child later this month -- with security away from the rink.

A two-game point streak to start the season followed an effective preseason, which followed a strong offseason. Foligno was primed for his best season yet, until it all came crashing down in a split second near center ice at the United Center. As the fight with Hayden drew to a close -- a fight which Foligno had mostly controlled until that point -- the Wild winger let up for a split second.
That's all it took for Hayden to connect with one solid punch, one that fractured a facial bone on the left side of Foligno's face.
"It hurt a little bit of the ego," Foligno said. "I take pride in being physical and tough for my teammates. Sometimes when that happens, you feel like you've let them down a little bit and you don't want anyone to think you're weak or less tough than the guy you're fighting. That played with my mind a bit."
Foligno missed just one game, returning with a cage on his helmet. And while it doesn't seem like a big deal, playing with it changed his game. A physical tone-setter when at his best, the cage limited Foligno's ability to do just that.

Add in the fact he was adjusting to a new team for the first time, in a new city and now, with a bruised ego to boot, Foligno's first couple months with the Wild did not play out exactly how he had wanted.
"It was something I had to work my way out of," Foligno said. "If you can get through it and grind through it, I knew there was going to be light at the end of the tunnel there."

Firing them up

When Foligno is at his best, he has the ability to add life to a bench -- and a building.
Take Game 3 on Sunday night.
Because of a pair of early penalties on the Wild, Foligno didn't hop over the boards for his first shift until nearly 7 minutes had elapsed off the clock. Minnesota trailed 1-0 on the scoreboard and had just one shot on goal.
Ten seconds into his first shift, Foligno flattened Jacob Trouba with a thunderous hit along the end wall near the left corner.
The puck squirted free to the right corner and was tracked down by Winnipeg's Josh Morrissey, who was blasted into the wall by none other than Foligno.
The two hits brought a quiet arena to its feet and breathed life into his teammates.
Twenty seconds later, Minnesota was on the power play. Just 39 seconds after that, the Wild had a 5-on-3 advantage.
Less than three minutes elapsed between Foligno's hits and Mikael Granlund's tying goal. Minnesota continued its push, scoring on Zach Parise's power-play tally later in the period and the Wild never trailed again.

"He had two or three hits right off the bat, and that got the crowd into it," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau. "It's a really tough job for a big man to sit on the bench and come out with a lot of energy. But the fact is he was ready to go from the get go and did a great job."

Fighting through

It's those kind of contributions that had the Wild thrilled last summer when it acquired Foligno in a trade with the Sabres a few days before the start of free agency.
Minnesota's deal to send Jason Pominville and Marco Scandella to Buffalo cleared enough cap space for the team to re-sign both Mikael Granlund and Nino Niederreiter, but it also yielded Foligno and Tyler Ennis to help bolster its forward group.
Foligno in particular was a player Wild brass had their eyes on for years, as someone who was big and powerful, but as someone swift enough to move up and down the ice and occasionally chip in some offense.
Foligno, coming off a career-high 13-goal, 23-point performance the season before in Buffalo, was a major coup.
Much of that production, however, hinges on him bringing that physical element, first and foremost. It's the linchpin to everything else in his game.
"It brings everybody alive," said Wild assistant coach John Anderson. "We always say you have to work to your strengths, and his is getting in on the forecheck and finishing people."
Even though the injury in the season's third contest only kept Foligno out of one game, it cost him far more mentally.
Playing the physical game he does sometimes results in having to drop the gloves. It's simply the cost of doing business. But with a cage on his helmet and a broken bone in his face, his ability to pay that cost -- and thus play that game -- was taken away.
"I was feeling great about my game [coming out of training camp], then you take a shot in a fight and it sets you back a bit," Foligno said. "I only missed one game and I came back from an injury that some would be out with for a month. But I just thought, 'new team, you've gotta prove the toughness and you want to be there for the guys and get your place in this room.' Maybe I came back too early, but I fought through it and it made me have success later on in the season."

Finding his place

The early returns on Foligno were promising. He scored a goal in his first game back in Winnipeg, and had three goals in his first seven games after the injury.
But injuries to other forwards and the Wild's inability to create much offensively forced Boudreau to try and shuffle the deck to get things going.
For Foligno, that meant playing on the top line some nights, on the third or fourth others.
Between Nov. 4 and Jan. 14 -- a span of 35 games -- Foligno went without a goal. He was a healthy scratch twice and was a minus-3. Between Nov. 30 and Dec. 30, Foligno went 13 games without registering a point.
But something clicked for him around the new year.
He had four points in his first seven games of 2018, then broke his goal drought in the eighth game.
Slowly, the confidence lost in that early-season tussle crept back into his game.
"Just the turn of the calendar, and the thought of, 'Alright, I gotta get this thing going,'" Foligno said. "I think there was a lot of feeling out [early in the year]. A new team, that takes some time. But ... I needed to understand what I needed to do to make this team successful and how I could do my little part to feed off the other guys. That's when it really clicked for me, and I've really liked my game after that."
That understanding of his role was a big adjustment coming from Buffalo, where he was playing some games on the team's top line next to Jack Eichel. He was also seeing time on the penalty kill there, a role that he hasn't had to handle in his first season in Minnesota.

"He was getting 15 or 16 minutes a game [in Buffalo], it was a little different and he was killing penalties and everything else and that [opportunity] just wasn't here right now," Boudreau said. "It took him a while to understand that. I think he does now and whether it's 10 or 12 minutes, he gets out there, he plays really hard and he's been very effective."
While he was shuffled around for much of the early and middle parts of the season, Foligno has been a staple on the team's fourth line over the past six weeks, finding chemistry with Joel Eriksson Ek and Daniel Winnik.
Most nights, since about the beginning of March, the line has been a net positive. Others, they've been the Wild's best line.
Without a doubt, though, it's been its most consistent, at least in terms of stability.
"We've stuck with that line for a while now so they know each others' moves," Boudreau said. "That's probably the one line I haven't touched in the last month."
While Foligno's strengths are rarely recognized in the boxscore, he has had his share of big moments lately.

His game-winning goal in Glendale on March 17 capped a weekend sweep of the Vegas Golden Knights and Arizona Coyotes and came during a stretch in which the Wild tallied at least one point in the standings in seven-straight games. That was the critical stretch run that helped catapult the Wild into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Then in Game 3, he was standing in front of the net providing a screen on Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck when Jared Spurgeon's slap shot deflected off Foligno's body and in for his first career playoff goal.
It certainly wasn't pretty, but for Foligno, it doesn't need to be.
"For Marcus, once he understands what he's supposed to do, then he's really good at it. It just took him a little while to grasp on," Anderson said. "But he's been really good, and in the playoffs, this has been his best hockey."

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