Can Marcus Foligno spark the Wild in playoffs after a season of struggles?

The regular season was tough for Marcus Foligno.

"Not going to lie," he said. "It's been a frustrating year."

Where to begin?

There was a string of nagging injuries and of course the demise of his longtime line with Joel Eriksson Ek and Jordan Greenway. On top of that, Foligno finished with a paltry seven goals compared to the career-high 23 he ended up with in 2022.

Yeah, frustrating sounds about right.

But the Wild alternate captain has a chance to make what did or didn't happen over the past six months irrelevant.

Foligno is the prototypical playoff performer: He toils at both ends of the rink, handles each side of special teams and thrives on momentum swings, usually because he's the one initiating them as the Wild's heart-and-soul leader.

If he plays that way in the first-round series that starts Monday night at Dallas, his season should take on a whole new meaning.

"It's time for me to bring that game for the guys on a consistent basis," Foligno said, "and to be a factor."

Already, Foligno is ahead of the game.

He said recently he feels "really good" after a steady cycle of hurting and healing. Take just the past few months: He got smacked in the knee with a puck, had a hip flexor issue and then was bruised from falling on a skate.

Those abbreviated absences added up to 17 games lost, this after Foligno appeared in all but eight last season.

"I really haven't had many little injuries along the way," he said. "It's always been like a broken bone or something here or there that takes you out for about a month. I guess when you're getting 31, 32, you've been playing 12, 13 years, things start popping up."

But Foligno wasn't the only one on the mend.

Greenway didn't start the season with everyone else because he was still working his way back from offseason shoulder surgery. Even after Greenway returned, he and Foligno were in and out of the lineup because of injury.

That meant their trio with Eriksson Ek, appropriately dubbed the "GREEF" line because of how much of a handful the three of them were on the ice the past two seasons, never had the runway to gain traction. And when they were together, they weren't as dominating as before; not too long after the All-Star break, the line was split up.

Then ahead of the NHL trade deadline on March 3, the Wild dealt Greenway to Buffalo, a fresh start for Greenway after he struggled to turn the corner this season.

"I saw us as a line be really big for our team and to have it not taken away," Foligno said, "just it's not there this year, you have to adjust. It's just weird because you go from one of the better lines in the whole league to not even having a line anymore.

"I gotta go back to the drawing board."

Foligno realized he had to do whatever it took to help the team win.

Sure, the decline in production concerned him and he was hard on himself. Aside from becoming a first-time 20-goal scorer, he was also coming off a career-best 19 assists to culminate in 42 points, which is 16 more than his next highest output.

What changed?

Foligno led the NHL last season in shooting percentage among players who had logged at least as many games as he did, scoring off nearly 24% of his shots. Now, he's at 8.4% to go along with 14 assists and 21 points.

"Puck's not going in, not from my shot," he said. "It's even from just setting up in the offensive zone and getting a good rotation going. It's just not getting the bounce. You get lucky when you have a really good season like I did last year."

Offense, however, isn't his only objective.

The 6-3, 226-pound winger sets up as the screen on the second power play, averages about a minute on the penalty kill each game and paces the team in hits with 237.

By finishing his checks, impeding the opposition's chances and being difficult to move away from the net, Foligno can lay the groundwork for the big picture, the grout that binds all the key moments into a complete game.

"Sure, maybe the numbers aren't there," coach Dean Evason said, "but his worth is still great."

Especially when it comes to Foligno's leadership, which puts him behind the team's emotional switchboard.

Foligno is the pulse of the team personified, a real-time vibe check on skates, and he has a knack for knowing when and how to adjust the temperature.

Look how he flipped the game a week ago in Chicago.

He fought the Blackhawks' Andreas Englund, who gave Foligno flak for a hit he doled out. Once they were separated, Foligno held up Englund's helmet, what he described as a "gladiator moment," and was ejected. While he was gone, a sleepy Wild lineup woke up to stave off an upset from one of the NHL's worst teams.

"He's an assistant captain on this team for a reason," winger Ryan Reaves said. "It's because he knows how to keep his emotions in check but also use his emotion to bring out the best in our bench."

Bingo.

That's exactly what Foligno is trying to accomplish.

Goals and assists are great but if he can spark someone else to make an impact, too, Foligno is fulfilling his potential.

He can't go back to October or November and do that, but he can influence what happens from now on.

And that outcome will matter much more than the regular season.

"I do feel that I need to be the guy — not the guy — but to bring that game that can lift everyone up and be that playoff style, the player I know I am," Foligno said. "But I want to be able to contribute at the same time. It's just to be a factor in the playoffs, that's all I want.

"I want whoever we play first round to understand it was tough because they had this guy, this guy and this guy. I want to be one of those guys they think about. That's all. If I'm that guy, then I know I'm helping out the team the right way."