Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 2, Ducks 1

Wild.com's Dan Myers gives three takeaways from the Wild's 2-1 win against the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. on Friday night:

1. The Moose got loose ... finally
And he got loose, quite literally, on Friday night in the O.C. After an interference penalty late in the first period turned into a fight, which turned into round two of a fight with haymakers over the heads of officials, Marcus Foligno was assessed a two-minute minor, a five-minute major and a 10-minute misconduct ... which meant he had to sit for 17 minutes of game time in the penalty box.
Foligno went to the box at the start of the second period and wasn't set free until there were just over four minutes left in the frame.
Needless to say, he made up for lost time.
With regulation in its dying seconds, Foligno gained control of the puck near the hashes and did a falling-down spin-o-rama, sweeping a loose puck through the wickets of Ducks goaltender Anthony Stolarz with 7.2 seconds remaining on the clock and the game tied at 1-1.

Per the NHL, Foligno's goal (officially scored at 19:52 of the third period) was the latest go-ahead goal in franchise history, besting Jim Dowd's winning goal with 16 seconds remaining in a game against Chicago on Jan. 21, 2004.
He's also the third player in NHL history to score a game-winning goal in the final 10 seconds of regulation in a season opener (Dustin Penner in 2008, Steve Yzerman in 2003).
"I actually missed it on the backhand swat, and then I thought I might have had a lot more body position if I kind of did a spin-o-rama," Foligno said. "I just got lucky. Luck kind of took over from there, it went through Stolarz's legs and it got us the win."
Foligno admitted it was probably the first time he spent more time in the penalty box than he did on the ice. His 17 PIMs were four minutes more than his 13:11 of TOI, but that just meant he was fresher at the end, right?

"I could have had a bucket of popcorn, sat with you guys and watched the second period then came back down for the third," Foligno said.
Foligno said afterward that his "wires got crossed" when Anaheim forward Max Jones cross-checked him in his lower back, which started the initial fracas, then tried to land a jab or two after they had been separated by the linesmen.
Ultimately, Foligno ended up getting the extra two minutes for interference for shoving Jones into the Wild net moments before the cross-check, which went uncalled.
Jones ended up going to the box for fighting and for a misconduct, but nothing more.

"[The referees] didn't like that Moose threw the punch with the refs there," said Wild coach Dean Evason. "But Moose doesn't do that if he wasn't instigated. But he was well rested, right, so we tried to get him out there as much as we could after that."
Kidding aside, Foligno showed his multi-faceted value to this team in all areas on Friday, getting into a fight, nearly scoring on Kevin Fiala's power-play goal in the second period and being on the ice as time ticked down in a tied game late.
"He's a leader on our team," Evason said. "He goes to the net, he does all the right things, says all the right things and that's why we named him an assistant captain. He does that every night."
2. Power play turns the tide
Just 17 seconds into the second period, Anaheim scored the game's first goal on the power play, giving the Ducks a 1-0 advantage.
So what better for the Wild than scoring a power-play marker of its own later in the second to get things even?
Minnesota had a wide shot disparity at the time of the man advantage, but to that point, Stolarz had kept his cage completely clean.

The Wild's top power play had struggled on two previous power plays, but the third time was the charm, as Mats Zuccarello found Fiala on the backdoor with a quick pass and a redirection past Stolarz, knotting the game at 1 apiece. Kirill Kaprizov was credited with the second assist.
The power play is something that has been an emphasis for the Wild since (literally) the first day of training camp, and coach Dean Evason brought up its importance on a couple of occasions the past few days.
Seeing it connect on a big goal early in the season can only help as Minnesota aims to build on the success the man advantage had later in the year last season after a really slow start.
"If we come out of that game and we have looks and stuff, maybe we say the same things we did in games one and two last year, where yeah, we had looks, but we didn't score," Evason said. "You've gotta score. That's their job is to score goals, the power play's job, is to score goals. We scored one and we had great looks. We had good faceoffs ... and we were able to control the puck. We're happy with it."

Fiala was a harsher critic of the power play, but was pleased it was able to connect, especially at that point in the game, with Minnesota down one late in the period and probably deserving of better than where it was sitting.
"Our PP wasn't that good I feel like today, but you have to take the positive; we scored," Fiala said. "That's a positive, [now] we [have to] do it again tomorrow."
That task will be easier said than done against a Los Angeles Kings team that limited the Wild to just one power-play goal in 29 tries over eight games last season.
3. Talbot's time
Lost in the shuffle of Foligno's late heroics was a pretty darn good performance by both goaltenders, especially Wild netminder Cam Talbot, who finished the game with 28 saves on 29 shots.
The lone goal to beat him came just seconds into the middle period on a wraparound try by Jakub Silfverberg that appeared to deflect in off defenseman Matt Dumba's stick.
Other than that one hiccup, Talbot was outstanding, stopping both quantity and quality.
During one stretch midway through the third period, Talbot made a handful of giant saves, including an incredible pad robbery of Ryan Getzlaf.

"It was still a 1-1 game. You just try and keep it out of your net and give us an opportunity to get that big one that Moose ended up getting," Talbot said. "I was trying to do everything I could to get anything in front of that and I got lucky. It gave us a chance."
As time was winding down, Talbot admitted he was starting the process of mentally preparing for 3-on-3 overtime when Foligno's spinning beauty of a goal meant he'd be shaking hands and pounding fists celebrating a victory instead.
"At that point, I think you're bracing for it," Talbot said. "With seven seconds left, you know they're probably not going to come down and get a quality opportunity from below their goal line. But again, give credit to our guys, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at [Stolarz] tonight. And he played a heck of a hockey game, we were just able to bury a lucky one at the end there."
Stolarz finished with 41 saves, tied for the second-most in a game in his career.

Loose pucks

• Evason lamented the Wild's inability to get shots to the net earlier in the game. When thinking in the context of Foligno's winning goal, Evason said he wished his group had done a better job of getting anything and everything to the net. The Wild still had 43 shots on goal, but Evason commented afterward that he thought the group maybe got a little too cute at times. "I thought that we didn't get enough through, but we were very fortunate at the end," Evason said. "We did some things that were a little too cute and a little too fancy in some areas, but we did stick with it. We liked the emotion of our group, we liked the composure and we liked the leadership. There was no panic."
• Minnesota finished with a 43-29 edge on the shot chart.
• The two clubs combined for 48 penalty minutes and nine total power plays.
• Matt Dumba and Jonas Brodin each earned assists on Foligno's goal.

Dan's 3 Stars

1. Marcus Foligno
   2. Cam Talbot
   3. Anthony Stolarz

Highlights