CHICAGO — Marcus Foligno and Vinni Lettieri had their fingerprints on everything in the Minnesota Wild’s 2-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks inside United Center on Wednesday night.
Foligno scored the game-winning goal with 9:53 left, had a heavyweight fight with Jarred Tinordi, finished with three hits and assisted on Marco Rossi's disallowed first-period goal. So Foligno finished an assist away from completing the Gordie Howe hat trick. “That would have been nice, but that’s OK,” Foligno said. “I’ll take the fight and the goal.”
“He was a difference-maker tonight, obviously with the fight,” coach John Hynes said of Foligno postgame, “but I thought he brought energy, played to his identity. We switched him around on some different lines later in the game.
“He’s a real valuable member of the team (and) not only in the way he plays, but as you said, he understands where the team’s going, where it might need momentum, and he’s willing to do things that are difficult to do, and he’s an inspirational guy. He’s a voice in the room. He says the right things. That’s why he’s an assistant captain. He’s a real glue guy. When you look at the dynamic of a team, he’s certainly a leader.”
As for Lettieri, he had the primary assist on both Wild goals, but that wasn't all he did in his eight minutes and 54 seconds of ice time in his first game back from a broken foot that kept him out the past 15 games. With about three and half minutes to go, and Filip Gustavsson out of position, Lettieri blocked a Colin Blackwell shot that would have gone in and tied the game at two apiece.
“He saved me,” Gustavsson said of Lettieri. “As soon as that puck left my stick, I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is not good.’ And then it’s just a panic mode, panic mode and then Vinni, I think, Merms was also there in the net. Very fortunate that it hit Vinni there.”
On a night where the Wild's top-six was invisible, their bottom-six (headlined by Foligno and and Lettieri) and Gustavsson (.952 save percentage and 0.82 goals saved above expected) proved to be the difference makers en route to a 11th straight win against the Blackhawks dating back to Feb. 4, 2020.
The Wild have started the unofficial second half of the season on the right note and now sit just five points behind the eighth-place St. Louis Blues. The Wild — who were without Jonas Brodin (sick) and Connor Dewar and Pat Maroon (injured reserve) — didn't do themselves any favors Wednesday. But the Wild found a way to win against the Blackhawks, who sit in the league's basement with a 22-23-5 record.
Jake Lucchini opened the scoring for the Wild when his one-timer from the high slot beat Petr Mrazek blocker side with 7:33 left in the first period.
It marked Lucchini's first goal with the Wild and his second career NHL marker. Lucchini scored his first NHL goal on Jan. 1, 2023 when he had been with the Ottawa Senators.
The Wild had got on the board earlier in the first when Rossi cashed in on Foligno's rebound, but the goal was immediately waved off because it was determined that Foligno interfered with Mrazek when he drove to the net.
Just like in back-to-back regulation losses to the Nashville Predators and Anaheim Ducks before the bye week and All-Star break where they coughed up one-goal leads, the Wild yet again couldn't get a cushion goal despite outshooting the Blackhawks 11-1 after one. Chicago made the Wild pay for it in the second when Nick Foligno broke through to tie the game at one apiece with 6:16 left.
“If we do that against high-end teams, it might be a different second period,”Foligno said. “It was just frustrating. We tend to do that lately, and that’s kind of the problem with this season is just our let-ups. Enough’s enough.
“We gotta hold each other accountable. We gotta get ticked off. Our third period was better but we could have had a better lead going into the third.”
Well, Marcus Foligno responded with a goal of his own, which stood as the winner. He redirected Lettieri's backdoor feed past Mrazek with 9:53 remaining.
Unlike in the final two games before the break, the Wild managed to hold their third period lead. Gustavsson, who earned his 14th win of the season, is a key reason behind that. He made a number of Grade-A stops, which included a brilliant skate save on a Boris Katchouk breakaway in the third period.
“It wasn’t pretty today,” Gustavsson said. “Second period was very bad for us. And then in the third, we just found a win to win today. It wasn’t pretty. It was not the best. It wasn’t what we should do.”
“We had a good first period and then we came out and we got out-competed, out-executed, out-skated in the second period,” Hynes said. “You can’t win hockey games like that. We had too many passengers, particularly in the second period. Third period, we were better. The good thing is we won the game, which is important, but we’ve got to be much better collectively as a group moving forward here.”
Even though the Wild won, Hynes wants the standard raised.
“We found a way, but it’s not the right recipe to give ourselves a chance to win every night,” Hynes said. … “Let me put it this way: We found a way to win the game, but in my opinion the standard needs to be much higher.”
That’s fair. The Wild failed to capitalize on their chances, got no contributions from their top-six and kept the league's worst team with injuries to forwards Connor Bedard, Taylor Hall, Andreas Athanasiou and Anthony Beauvillier and defensemen Connor Murphy and Nikita Zaitsev in the game.
The Wild will have an opportunity to build on the win Friday at home on Marc-Andre Fleury night against the Pittsburgh Penguins.