The Wild Warmup is presented by Bryant Heating and Cooling
LOS ANGELES -- Just 24 hours after it started off its regular season with a dramatic final-minute victory down the road in Anaheim, the Wild will aim to take both ends of its West Coast back-to-back on Saturday when it faces the Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center.
Marcus Foligno broke a 1-1 tie with 7.2 seconds remaining in regulation on Friday, lifting his club to a 2-1 victory and making some history in the process.
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."
Kevin Fiala also scored in the game for Minnesota and goaltender Cam Talbot finished with 28 saves on 29 shots to earn the victory.
The Wild went 1-for-5 on the power play, getting Fiala's goal late in the second period to knot the score at 1-1 and set up Foligno's late fireworks.
"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."
"Our PP wasn't that good I feel like on Friday], but you have to take the positive; we scored," Fiala said. "That's a positive, [now] we [have to] do it again [on Saturday
