Nick Foligno is back on the ice in Minnesota just in time for the moment his family had long imagined. The Wild’s March 6 trade for the veteran forward from the Chicago Blackhawks set up a rare brother act with Marcus Foligno, and it lands with Game 3 of their first-round series against the Dallas Stars scheduled for Wednesday night, April 22, in St. Paul.
The timing matters because the best-of-seven series moved to Minnesota tied 1-1, giving the Wild a chance to make the most of a home-ice stretch that now includes both Foligno brothers. Their father, Mike Foligno, said he planned to be at Grand Casino Arena for the next few games, after Marcus called the trade a dream come true for him.
For Mike Foligno, the scene is bigger than one playoff round. He played 1,018 regular-season NHL games and 57 playoff games for Detroit, Toronto, Florida and the Buffalo Sabres after going third overall in 1979, but this one reaches deeper. Nick was drafted 28th in the first round by Ottawa in 2006, Marcus went in the fourth round in 2009 and joined the Wild in 2017, and the brothers grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, with a family story shaped as much by loss as by hockey.
That loss is never far away. Their mother, Janis, died in 2009 after battling breast cancer, and Nick said his father would probably wish she were there to see the brothers in the same playoff run. Marcus said Mike gets nervous for their games, especially in the postseason, and that he would likely rather sit on the couch and watch on TV than feel the strain of being in the building. Still, Marcus said, the family is thrilled and Mike is just so excited.
Mike Foligno knows the sound of those games better than most parents do. He said he had to go through a few different remotes back when Nick’s Chicago games and Marcus’ Wild games could land on the same day, wearing them all out at once. At home, he said, the brothers used to battle in a mini-stick room, slamming each other into the walls so hard he had to replace the drywall a few times. Now the fights are on NHL ice, and for the first time, they are wearing the same uniform in a playoff chase that has given the family a new kind of hope.
The question is no longer whether the Folignos can share the spotlight. It is whether Minnesota can turn that shared pride into the kind of postseason run that lets a father who spent a career chasing the same prize finally watch both sons pursue it together.
