Veteran Wild forward Marcus Foligno did not see any law enforcement on his drive from the suburbs to the team\u2019s Sunday morning practice at TRIA Rink in downtown St. Paul. That was probably a good thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was flying,\u201d Foligno admitted with a sheepish grin so he could join teammates and staff to watch the third period of Team USA\u2019s tight gold medal game against Canada in the Wild theater-style video room.<\/p>\n
And as a dual citizen \u2014 born in New York but was raised in Ontario \u2014 Foligno said Team USA\u2019s 2-1 overtime win to claim the nation\u2019s first men\u2019s Olympic gold since 1980 was less about national fealty than it was about Minnesota teammates Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber and forward Matt Boldy playing for the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all represent the USA but the Minnesota Wild at the same time,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m excited for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three Wild players were back from Milan and on the ice for Sunday\u2019s skate, Team Sweden goalies Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt in the nets and Team Czechia defenseman David Spacek shooting pucks.<\/p>\n
The Wild\u2019s three triumphant Americans all had an impact in the finale. Boldly scored the first goal on an assist from Hughes, and Faber was a key cog in the Team USA penalty kill, which was a perfect 18 for 18 in the Olympics. That included a 5-on-3 Canada power play on Sunday that lasted more than 90 seconds.<\/p>\n
Wild head coach John Hynes, an assistant coach for Team USA, was placed in charge of the penalty kill, which played an important role in snapping a 46-year gold medal drought.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s huge. I mean, it just goes to show you that special teams can win you games, win you tournaments,\u201d Wild defenseman Zach Bogosian said. \u201cYou can just see the compete level and the selflessness that guys are willing to block shots and stuff like that. So, yeah, it\u2019s obvious that can be a huge difference-maker in a game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bogosian, who spent three-plus seasons employed by the Winnipeg Jets, said fans in Manitoba likely aren\u2019t happy with their goaltender, American star Connor Hellebuyck, but will be happy to have him wearing a Jets sweater as Winnipeg tries to get back into the playoff chase over the next two months.<\/p>\n
While the final health report from the Olympics is a tightly-guarded secret, the 10 players from the Wild organization who traveled to Italy for the games all appear to be returning free of major injuries. And for the three Americans, with a gold medal on their resum\u00e9, their Minnesota teammates expect the focus to change quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like every time they touch the puck, it\u2019s doing something dangerous, so we just hope they keep rolling,\u201d Foligno said. \u201cCome back here excited with a chance to keep winning. That\u2019s what we want to do here. We want to end the season with a Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor those guys, they got a taste of winning and they\u2019ve been in probably the highest-pressure situation. So, to have three guys in the locker room going into the Stanley Cup playoffs is beneficial for us, big time.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a day off on Monday, the Wild will practice Tuesday and Wednesday in St. Paul before a flight to Denver, where they will resume their NHL season Thursday night against the Colorado Avalanche. Puck drop is set for 8 p.m. CST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran Wild forward Marcus Foligno did not see any law enforcement on his drive from the suburbs to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,1336,161,38,5280,4,15262,1496,43,162],"class_list":["post-467568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-wild","tag-hockey","tag-marcus-foligno","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-minnesotawild","tag-nhl","tag-olympic-hockey","tag-quinn-hughes","tag-sports","tag-wild"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116117353891477345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}