Story by
Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
One Wild offseason question: Will the Foligno brothers reunite?
- Story byPioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
- One Wild offseason question: Will the Foligno brothers reunite?
A few days after the Wild's season ended abruptly in Colorado , brothers Nick and Marcus Foligno cleaned out their Grand Casino Arena lockers and said their goodbyes. With Nick headed back to his home in Columbus, Ohio, and Marcus living in the Twin Cities, they vowed to see each other again at the family's lakeside retreat in Ontario at some point in the summer.
When Marcus and his family entered a room at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center in late May, he was expecting to meet kids as part of the hospital tours pro athletes routinely make. He was stunned to find Nick there, and even more surprised when he was handed one of the NHL's major individual awards by his brother.
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"(My daughter) thought it was the Stanley Cup," Marcus joked. "So she was pretty excited about it."
The King Clancy Memorial Trophy is presented annually "to the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community." For his efforts to raise money for cancer research, Marcus is the 2026 winner of the award, following in Nick's wake after the elder Foligno brother won the trophy in 2017 with the Blue Jackets .
In the summer of 2009, the Folignos lost their mother after a battle with breast cancer. They established the Janis Foligno Foundation in her memory, and last season raised more than $200,000 to fund the fight against cancer through a promotion named the Foligno Face-Off.
"Nick and I could have both been up there for the award this year," Marcus said. "But it was obviously special to receive it from a past winner."
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Marcus and Nick were Central Division rivals at the start of last season, when the Foligno Face-Off began. While Marcus is a respected locker room leader in Minnesota, Nick was captain of the Chicago Blackhawks . Fans could make a donation to either Team Nick or Team Marcus when the Wild and Blackhawks met head-to-head, with the money raised funding a new grant for breast cancer research that will be named in honor of their mother.
The Clancy award also encompasses on-ice work, and Marcus Foligno has been a leader for the Wild in the locker room from the day when he arrived from Buffalo in 2017. Now an alternate captain, Marcus has earned a reputation as someone who will speak on the team's behalf in good times and bad, including offering some of the Wild's only public comments on last winter's unrest in the Twin Cities during the ICE presence in the metro area.
The brothers' fundraising challenge changed in March, when a trade deadline deal brought Nick to Minnesota, and united the siblings on the same NHL roster for the first time. They spent roughly two months together with the Wild, often on the same line, as the team advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.
Whether the brother act will get a second run in Minnesota is one of the bigger questions to be answered in the off-season. Nick, who will turn 39 on Halloween, is headed into unrestricted free agency, and almost certainly will need to take a pay cut from the $4.5 million he made last season if he is to give it another go.
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He could also retire after nearly 1,300 NHL games. The younger Foligno brother said they have not yet gotten any hints of which direction Nick is leaning.
"It's gonna take some time for him to figure out what he wants to do for next season," Marcus said. "I know that we'd all love to have him back and he was a crucial part of the team at the end of the season."
Nick had two goals and an assist in 11 playoff games with the Wild, while Marcus, who turns 35 this summer, had identical playoff numbers. Asked about the idea of taking a pay cut to keep playing in Minnesota, Nick joked that he made it clear to management that he's willing to play for less than the $17 million the Wild will pay Kirill Kaprizov in 2026-27.
"Like $16 million," Nick said with a smile, "and then I think we'll make it work."
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