A locker room speech sparked Wild’s comeback against the Rangers

Marcus Foligno didn't channel Al Pacino and deliver an "Any Given Sunday" monologue or make an Herb Brooks "Miracle" speech.

"No 'Braveheart' or anything like that," Foligno said. "Save that for the real intense games like the playoffs."

But the Wild alternate captain did address the team when players retreated to the locker room after one period on Saturday at Xcel Energy Center already trailing the Rangers 3-0.

What happened next?

The Wild took control during the second period, shed their deficit in the third and then finally overcame New York for good in a shootout to earn a long-awaited slump-busting victory.

"I just said, 'It's fitting that we have to dig a deeper hole to get out of it.' That's what I pretty much said," Foligno recalled. "I said, 'This is the stuff that makes teams come together, and you can look at it and just say, wow, we're deeper than we were before. But eventually you gotta get out of the hole. If you're going to complain and go on your own, take long shifts and look for breakaways and stuff like that, then it's going to be 8-0.'

"We didn't do that, and that was a good character win."

That outcome looked like a pipe dream when the Wild skated off after the first period.

Sure, they displayed the urgency of a team on a four-game losing streak but were stunned by three goals on four shots in 3 minutes, 17 seconds — a blitz by the Rangers that led to coach Dean Evason pulling goalie Filip Gustavsson to give the Wild a jolt.

A clutch penalty kill later in the period prevented New York from inflating its advantage even more, and the Wild were getting quality looks despite not capitalizing on them.

At the intermission, Evason came into the Wild's room right away, which he doesn't usually do, and told the players they were doing the right things and that the room was theirs.

Cue Foligno.

"The more you can give the room to the players, the better off you're going to be," Evason said. "Coaches can come in and kick the garbage can only so many times, and they're like, 'He kicked the garbage can again. Who cares?'

"But when a player, a peer, stands up or says something, it obviously has a lot of weight within the team."

Foligno and alternate captains Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek recently had individual meetings with Evason, and they were informed the team needed more from its core players — what Foligno described as a "wakeup call."

Other leaders besides Foligno spoke up during that first intermission, and then the entire team sent a message on the ice to earn a clean slate ahead of a three-game road trip that starts Tuesday vs. the Islanders.

"We gotta walk like we talk it, too," Eriksson Ek said. "It doesn't matter really how much you say in the locker room if you don't do it when we get out there."

Two goals in 29 seconds from Ryan Hartman and Eriksson Ek arrived early in the second before Mats Zuccarello and Marco Rossi scored in the third to give the Wild the lead. Although the Rangers responded before the period ended, the Wild never faltered: they prevailed 5-4 after Zuccarello and Matt Boldy converted in the shootout and Marc-Andre Fleury denied two tries from New York.

Minutes later, Foligno was back in the locker room in front of his teammates, this time recounting a victory.

"You gotta be stern with what you say, and guys will follow that," said Foligno, who is in his third season as an alternate captain. "You gotta say the right things. If you're shaking in your voice and you're unsure, it's like, 'I don't know if I want to follow this guy.'

"When you can be stern and be right to the point and direct but include everyone and be a positive factor, there's going to be times where you snap a team out of a skid and get them going the other way and it's because of just calming things down and motivating them to do better."