Amid all of the bad blood between the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars, we’ve stumbled upon a case of human decency between Wild tough guy Marcus Foligno and Stars veteran forward Matt Duchene.
If you’ll recall, Foligno wanted to fight Duchene after he picked his bloody face up off the ice during the second period of Minnesota’s 4-3 double-overtime loss in Game 3 on Wednesday night. After blocking Duchene’s shot, Duchene tripped on a falling Foligno, with the force of the fall slamming Foligno’s face into the ice.
The officials reviewed the play for a possible major penalty, but determined it was an accident. Bloodied, Foligno was furious, if only for a short period. As it turns out, Duchene is good buddies with the Foligno brothers, Marcus and Nick.
“First of all, I’m tight with the Foligno boys, especially Nick. Like, Nick is one of my best friends in hockey. Marcus, I know a little bit just through Nick, and I went up to their charity game they used to have for their mom up in Sudbury, Ontario, and I stayed at Nick’s house. I know those guys, I know their dad. They are the most salt of the earth, great [guys]. I’m a Christian, they’re Christian, so we connect on that level. You wouldn’t know it by the way they play I guess, but as soon as you put the gear on, man, everything’s out the window,” Duchene said during an interview on Sports Radio 1310 “The Ticket” on Thursday.
After cooler heads prevailed, and Foligno had cleaned the blood from his nose and mouth, he and Duchene came to an understanding.
“So when that happened, I felt him underneath me. I literally felt his nose crunch on the ice, and I was like, oh man, that’s not gonna be good. And then he was down, and I’m like, oh man,” Duchene explained.
“I felt bad. So I skated up to check on him, truthfully. Like, what the heck else was I gonna go do there? Marcus is one of the strongest, biggest guys in the league. Like, I’m not gonna try and go poke that bear, right? Like, what would I be doing? And again, I have ultimate respect for the guy. I love both those boys. I legitimately was going up to talk to him, and he just snapped. He saw red. It’s funny, he snorted blood all over my jersey. I had his blood all over me the rest of the game.”
Credit: Matt Krohn-Imagn Images
Duchene said Nick Foligno and Wild defenseman Jared Spurgeon initially though he cross-checked Marcus.
“I was like, ‘Boys, come on, I fell on him.’ I said, ‘Watch this.’ Obviously, they reviewed it, and they showed it on the Jumbotron, and I watched all their faces when they saw on the Jumbotron, and they were like, ‘Ah, okay,'” Duchene continued.
“So anyway, third period, Marcus and I lined up at a draw, and he came right up to me, right away, and said, ‘All good, man, I know you didn’t do that on purpose. It just felt like it when it happened, but all good.’ And I said, ‘Dude, honestly, I don’t blame you. I felt you underneath me, and I could feel what happened. I was literally coming to check on you. Like, I felt bad.’ I said the same thing in my press conference.”
Duchene and Foligno reasoning with each other is literally the only act of kindness we can think of through three games of a heated playoff series. Most of the attention has been on Stars forward Jamie Benn, who slewfooted Matt Boldy in Game 2 and then essentially cross-checked him in the back of the head in Game 3.
On top of that, Dallas’ Wyatt Johnson speared Kirill Kaprizov in the crotch and got away with it in Game 3, and Mats Zuccarello missed Games 2 and 3 after taking an elbow to the head from Dallas’ Tyler Myers.
“I’m not gonna go out there and look to cheap-shot anybody,” Duchene said. “I’m not that guy anyway. That’s not my style.”
About the author
