Marcus Foligno Is Playing Like A Moose In A China Shop This Postseason

Back in 2017, when a (stop me if you've heard this before) capped-out Minnesota Wild team traded Jason Pominville for Marcus Foligno, Chuck Fletcher was hoping to get a playoff performer. Someone who could lay huge, crunching hits. Someone who could score dirty rebound goals, and who could fit in perfectly as the games increased in physicality and intensity. 

Despite being created in a coaching lab to be a playoff guy, Foligno hasn't quite been what Minnesota envisioned. Not in the postseason. "Moose" would always play the body, of course, never shying away from the physical aspect of the game. But even after Foligno discovered his regular-season scoring touch, he would leave the offense behind as soon as the first round started.

In his first five trips to the postseason, Foligno had only two goals and seven points in 28 games. That's an 82-game pace of six goals and 21 points. Why the sudden drop-off?

A big reason is the wear and tear from being a hockey player who perfectly fits the "Moose" nickname. He tends to miss a chunk of games throughout the regular season. Even when he's in the lineup down the stretch, he's usually managing some nagging issue by playoff time.

But not this year. Now fully healthy at the perfect time, Foligno is having the kind of impact everyone imagined he could during a playoff series. 

There were plenty of reasons to cheer throughout Games 3 and 4 at the Xcel Energy Center. Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy starred in Game 3. Marco Rossi has a goal in each home game. Still, no name has been shouted as frequently or as intensely as "MOOOOOOOSE."

Foligno was already coming off (arguably) his best NHL season, and he's still kicked up the intensity at least two notches. He's laid 35 hits on Vegas through four games, almost triple his rate of 3.29 hits per game in 2024-25. The Golden Knights have a massive size disparity on the Wild, and Foligno's been a big part of evening the playing field when it comes to physicality. 

The hard-forechecking Foligno has gotten a lick in on every Vegas defenseman, all of whom measure in at 6-foot-2 or taller. He's made contact with Noah Hanifin and Tomas Hertl three times each, Brett Howden four times, and 6-foot-6 Nicolas Hague five times.

Zach Whitecloud has been Foligno's personal piñata, taking nine hits from Foligno so far this series.

Any playoff series becomes a war of attrition. Someone like Foligno running around and delivering nearly nine hits per game will put on some wear and tear on a team during a seven-game series.

Destruction for its own sake has some value, but Foligno's game hasn't just been about devastation. It's been about disruption. As much as Foligno's taken the body, he's also making great use of his stick. He's winning board battles and breaking up zone entries at 5-on-5 and on the penalty kill. 

And of course, there are the goals.

Foligno's never been any sort of volume shooter, and he's not pumping a bunch of shots at the net now (that's been Ryan Hartman's territory). Instead, Foligno almost exclusively shoots on high-danger opportunities around the net, which fuels his very high (17.7) shooting percentage over the past five years. 

He's gotten those opportunities, and he hasn't missed. Or well, he's only missed once. Three of his four shots have turned into goals, with two coming off Hartman rebounds and the third an empty-netter coming off a strong effort to chase down a puck.

Thanks largely to his health, Foligno is playing what any old-school fan would call Playoff Hockey, putting it all together for the first postseason in his career. His three goals already give him a career-high in points during a single playoff series, and he's scored more this year than the rest of his playoff career, combined.

It's exactly the kind of series Wild fans have envisioned for nearly a decade, and it might just be enough to make the difference between another first-round exit and a playoff run.