Mike Foligno

Mike Foligno
Date of birth	January 29, 1959
place of birth	Sudbury , Ontario , Canada
size	188 cm
Weight	88 kg
position	Right wing
Shot hand	Right
Draft
NHL Entry Draft	1979 , 1st lap, 3rd position Detroit Red Wings
Career stations
1975-1979	Sudbury Wolves
1979-1981	Detroit Red Wings
1981-1990	Buffalo Sabers
1990-1993	Toronto Maple Leafs
1993-1994	Florida panthers

Michael Anthony Foligno (born January 29, 1959 in Sudbury , Ontario ) is a retired Canadian ice hockey striker .

Career as a player

Mike Foligno began his career in 1975 with the Sudbury Wolves in the Canadian Junior League OMJHL . There he had a good first season at the side of players like Randy Carlyle or Ron Duguay and the Wolves reached the final of the J. Ross Robertson Cup during the season .

The following two years were very different. The Wolves were still at the top of the league in the 1976/77 season, but the next year they found themselves in last place. Foligno's performance was hardly affected and he established himself as one of the best players on his team. He finally reached the peak of his junior career in the 1978/79 season, when he won the Eddie Powers Memorial Trophy as best scorer with 65 goals and 85 assists in 68 games and was awarded the Red Tilson Trophy as the most valuable player in the league. There was also the Jim Mahon Memorial Trophy for the right winger with the most points scorer.

As a result, the Detroit Red Wings selected him in the NHL Entry Draft 1979 in the first round in position three and Foligno made it straight to the NHL . In the 1979/80 season he established himself with the Red Wings and was one of the team's best players with 71 points from 80 league games. In the choice of the Calder Memorial Trophy for the best new professional, he was only beaten by defender Ray Bourque at the end of the season .

Foligno also performed well in his second year as a professional, but also established himself in the league as an enforcer , so that he collected a total of 210 penalty minutes in 80 games through his tough game and some fist fights. His time in Detroit finally ended in December 1981 when he was transferred to the Buffalo Sabers along with Dale McCourt and Brent Peterson , who in return sent Danny Gare , Jim Schoenfeld and Derek Smith to Detroit.

In Buffalo, Mike Foligno was one of the pillars of coach Scotty Bowman's team for several years . There he played alongside Gilbert Perreault , Dave Andreychuk , Phil Housley , Pierre Turgeon and Lindy Ruff and showed constant offensive performances by scoring at least 20 goals in eight consecutive seasons. In doing so, he did not neglect his duties as an enforcer and so year after year he broke the 100 penalty minutes mark. The 1985/86 season was the best year of his career with 41 goals and 39 assists, but a few years later he was increasingly set up in a more defensive formation. In addition to his performances on the ice, Foligno also showed leadership qualities, which is why he wore the "C" of the team captain in the 1989/90 season .

After nine years in Buffalo, he was transferred to the Toronto Maple Leafs in December 1990 . There he was slowed down by injuries in the first two seasons, but was able to celebrate the greatest success of his NHL career in the 1992/93 season when he failed with the Maple Leafs only in the conference final at the Los Angeles Kings . The following season he only played four games for Toronto before being transferred to the Florida Panthers . He played for the Panthers until the end of the season and then ended his career.

After the end of his career, his jersey number 17 was the first number in the history of his junior team Sudbury Wolves to be banned and no longer given to any player. The numbers of his former teammates Randy Carlyle and Ron Duguay have now also been taken out of circulation.

In 2005 Foligno was inducted into the Buffalo Sabers Hall of Fame.

NHL statistics

	Seasons	Games	Gates	Assists	Points	Penalty minutes
Regular season	15th	1018	355	372	727	2049
Playoffs	8th	57	15th	17th	32	185

Career as a coach

After Mike Foligno had retired for one year from the sport of ice hockey, he returned in 1995 in the organization of the Toronto Maple Leafs and became an assistant coach at their farm team in the AHL , the St. John's Maple Leafs . Before the end of the 1995/96 season he was called to the NHL , where head coach Pat Burns was dismissed and Foligno was to assist his successor Nick Beverley . Beverley was replaced in the summer and Foligno also left the team.

In 1997 he took up the post as assistant coach to Marc Crawford at the Colorado Avalanche in the NHL. But he didn't stay here long either. In the summer of 1998 Crawford turned down a contract extension and Foligno was not scheduled for the coaching staff of Crawford's successor Bob Hartley . Instead, he received the offer of the AHL farm team, the Hershey Bears , as head coach and so remained in the organization of the franchise .

After a solid debut season with the Bears, Foligno was able to achieve his best result with the team in 1999/2000 when they won 43 of 80 games and made it to the conference finals of the playoffs . A year later, Hershey played a significantly weaker season and only finished eighth, which was enough for qualification for the playoffs. Starting as outsiders in the finals, the Bears reached the conference finals as in the previous year, but failed again. Foligno looked after the Hershey Bears, for which Brett Clark , Radim Vrbata , David Aebischer , Ville Nieminen , Marek Svatoš , Peter Budaj played for another two years, but they did not get beyond the second round of the playoffs.

In the summer of 2003 he left the Hershey Bears after five years and returned to his Canadian hometown Sudbury , where he accepted an offer from his former junior team Sudbury Wolves from the OHL and became their coach and general manager. The Wolves had finished the previous season in penultimate place in the league and Foligno managed to move back into the playoffs in his first year and stabilize the team in the following seasons.

2006/07 weakened the Wolves, however, and finished sixth in the Eastern Conference at the end of the season. In the play-offs, however, the team surprised and won the series against the favored Mississauga IceDogs , Barrie Colts and Belleville Bulls and moved as a representative of their conference into the final of the OHL, where they were subject to the Plymouth Whalers . It was only the second final in the history of the Wolves. In the first, Foligno had been a player himself.

Despite the positive performance in the final round, the team continued to weaken in the following season and only won 17 of the 68 games, which put them in last place in the league.

Since Mike Foligno took over as a coach in Sudbury in 2003, some Wolves players have made it to the NHL. These include Marc Staal , Zack Stortini , Benoît Pouliot and his eldest son Nick Foligno .

In June 2010, he left the Wolves and joined the Anaheim Ducks as an assistant coach . In early December 2011 he was also removed from office after head coach Randy Carlyle was dismissed from the Californians. For the 2012/13 season Foligno was hired by the Chicago Wolves as an assistant coach, in which he supported head coach Scott Arniel .

He then took over the position of assistant coach at the New Jersey Devils and worked there under Peter DeBoer and under the interim solution Oates / Stevens before he left the team at the end of the 2014/15 season.

Achievements and Awards

As a player

• 1979 Red Tilson Trophy
• 1979 Eddie Powers Memorial Trophy
• 1979 Jim Mahon Memorial Trophy
• 1979 OMJHL First All-Star Team

International

• 1986 bronze medal at the world championship

family

Mike Foligno's eldest son, Nick Foligno , is also a professional ice hockey player and plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL . From 2004 to 2007 he played under his father for the Sudbury Wolves and was the team's top scorer in two of the three seasons. Mike Foligno's youngest son, Marcus Foligno , was also active with the Wolves and was selected in the fourth round in the fourth round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft by the Buffalo Sabers , for whom he played until 2017. Like his father and brother, he occupies the forward position.

Web links

• Mike Foligno at hockeydb.com (English)
• Mike Foligno at legendsofhockey.net (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ nhl.com, Ducks add Mike Foligno as assistant coach