Marcus Foligno barely remembers doing it. He tends to black out during the heat of a battle.
That exactly what happened after Foligno dropped the gloves on Monday night at the United Center. His wires crossed and instinct took over.
Not only did Foligno quickly finish the fight with Blackhawks defenseman Andreas Englund, he ripped off his opponent’s helmet in the immediate aftermath and held it up like a prize. What was he saying as he did that?
Marcus Foligno vs. Andreas Englund 👊#mnwild | #Blackhawks pic.twitter.com/ighr8RXvzb
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“Just said, ‘I’ve got his head,’ ” Foligno said. “I felt like a little bit of a Gladiator moment.”
Asked about the sequence postgame, coach Dean Evason smiled and shook his head.
“It’s like he took his trophy,” Evason said. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”
The barbaric nature of the exchange wasn’t lost on Foligno.
“Was I a little bit fired up? Yeah,” Foligno said. “The boys had a good laugh about it. I don’t know. You just get revved up in the moment.”
Ultimately, that sparked the Wild to a 4-2 comeback victory over the Blackhawks. After slogging along for about 50 minutes, Foligno’s actions seemed to unlock something in his teammates. There was a tangible shift after that, for better or worse, and the Wild dominated the final 10 minutes.
“He got us going,” said Marcus Johansson, who immediately scored a pair of goals shortly Foligno left the ice “Happy that he’s OK.”
Maybe the funniest part was the fact that Foligno wasn’t around to see the fruits of his labor. On top of the fighting major penalty, Foligno also got tagged with a 10-minute misconduct, meaning he had to watch the rest of the game from the back.
Meanwhile, teammates Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Dumba weren’t playing in the game, so they were waiting for Foligno when he entered the Wild locker room. They all watched together as the Wild flipped the switch over the final minutes.
“I’ve got Flower and Dumbs down here and they were revving me up,” Foligno said with a laugh. “We were pretty pumped watching the game on the TV. We had a nice little popcorn party. It was awesome to see the guys respond that way.”
As for what caused the fight, Foligno noted that Englund approached him in response to a hit he delivered to Blackhawks center Jujhar Khaira earlier in the game.
“He said it was dirty, so I just said, ‘OK. Let’s fight,’ ” Foligno said. “It was just a bad game by us tonight. We didn’t really have much energy, myself included. Sometimes stuff like that can spark a team.”
That it did.
