Mike Foligno remembered a talk he had with his son, Nick Foligno, several years ago. He asked Nick, a forward with the Columbus Blue Jackets, what he loved most about hockey? What drove him to pursue it?

Mike Foligno remembered a talk he had with his son, Nick Foligno, several years ago. He asked Nick, a forward with the Columbus Blue Jackets, what he loved most about hockey? What drove him to pursue it?”He knocked me off my feet when he said, ‘You know what dad, I never got a chance when I was younger to spend a whole lot of time with you, just me and you, and I felt hockey was the way that we could bond,'” said Mike, who played 15 seasons in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers from 1979-94. “And I said, ‘Wow.’ Of all the things he could have said, it just knocked me over because that is the most important part about raising a child, that one-on-one time.”
Although Nick and Marcus Foligno, a forward for the Minnesota Wild, have more time to connect with their dad now with the NHL season paused since March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, the one-on-time time has still been limited. Nick and his family are staying in Columbus, Ohio, and though Mike and Marcus live close to each other in Sudbury, Ontario, their personal interactions haven’t come as often because of social distancing. 
But two weeks ago, the three were able to connect online, sharing their love of hockey and Mike’s influence during Coffee With Coaches, a weekly informal online session presented by Roger Neilson’s Coaches Clinic. 
During the session on April 24th, Nick and Marcus said before their dad taught them strategies, he taught them to love the game.
“It wasn’t drills first. It was, ‘Look at how talented these guys are, the beauty of the game,'” Nick said. “Marcus and I just loved to sit on the couch and watch games with him, loved to go to the rink with him. And let’s be honest, a lot of the times it was more of the fact that we never got to see him, so it was a chance to spend that time as well. He had to provide, so he had to work, and he put everything he had into his game and into his coaching career. So that was a fun thing for Marcus and me. Going to the rink with dad was a special thing.”
Following in their father’s footsteps, Nick went on to be selected by the Ottawa Senators in the first round (No. 28) of the 2006 NHL Draft and has 466 points (196 goals, 270 assists) in 908 games with the Senators and Blue Jackets. Marcus was selected by the Buffalo Sabres in the fourth round (No. 104) of the 2009 NHL Draft and has 183 points (75 goals, 108 assists) in 565 games with the Sabres and Wild. 
“No one pressured my dad to play. He came from Italy, probably soccer was the first sport over there,” Marcus said during the Coffee With Coaches session about Mike, who was born in Sudbury but spent part of his childhood in Italy. “He ended up loving the game by playing outside when he came to Canada. So he developed naturally, and that’s what he wanted for us.”
Mike put Nick and Marcus on the ice for the first time when each was three years old. Nick took to it right away. Marcus didn’t. 
“I got the skates on him, he was all excited, he’s looking at kids skating around,” Mike said. “Then we’re at the threshold of getting from bench to the ice and he went over and stepped over the threshold. The minute his second skate hit the ice, boom, he was right on his butt. He was so upset. He’s like, ‘I don’t want to be on my butt. I want to be skating like everybody else. I don’t like this.’ He comes off the ice, and I couldn’t get him on the ice the rest of that season. I had to wait a whole year to get him back on the ice. Couldn’t believe it. And we tried, we tried a number of times that year. I think the mental picture stuck with him and he was, ‘No way. No way.'”
After retiring from the NHL as a player following the 1993-94 season, Mike would get into coaching, which included stints with the Maple Leafs (1995-96) and Colorado Avalanche (1997-98) as an assistant before becoming coach of Sudbury of the Ontario Hockey League from 2003-10. 
During his time in Sudbury, Mike was able to coach Nick (2004-07) and Marcus (2006-11), but he was a bit apprehensive at first, wanting to set the right balance between the team and his sons. So he called Dale Hunter, who was Mike’s teammate in Sudbury in 1978-79 before playing 19 seasons in the NHL. Hunter coached London of the OHL for 19 seasons from 2001-20, and his sons, Dylan and Tucker, played for him there.
“I called him up out of the blue one day and said, ‘Dale, you had your sons, your brothers’ sons come through. How did you handle that whole complex situation?’ And he said, ‘Mike, I’ll give you the honest answer, I tried to handle all the players like my sons, and I handled my sons like all the players,'” Mike said. “It worked really well, because I kept going back to that any time there was a situation or emotion that got generated from something that maybe was a little bit conflicted with the play or anything else. I always went back to that.”
Communication was key, and no one got special treatment, not even his sons. Nick found that out firsthand when his dad made him do bag skates a second time after not touching the line on his first run.
“I said, ‘What was that about?’ He said, ‘The reason why I made you do it was accountability. If you didn’t hit the line and one of your teammates saw you not hit the line, and I didn’t say anything, I would be doing you a disservice because none of those guys would trust you, none of those guys would trust me, and we’d ruin what we’re trying to build,'” Nick said. “I had nothing. I went from being so mad to being kind of embarrassed to, ‘Oh, he’s right.’ It made me realize this is bigger than me.”
As Nick and Marcus continued their careers, they appreciated coaches whose style was similar to their dad’s. Marcus said Lindy Ruff, his coach with the Sabres from 2011-13, had a major impact on him.
“He was just no-nonsense, but in the same way (like Mike) he could enjoy himself after big wins,” Marcus said of Ruff. “He was easy to talk to off the ice when it came to getting to know you, your family, what’s going on. He knew how to address the room. He knew when to light a fire under us, knew when you could deal with your own problems, things like that.”
After spending one season as a scout for the Vegas Golden Knights ahead of the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft, Mike was hired as a support coach for Canada men’s para hockey team’s selection camp in September 2017. 
The following July, he was named the team’s assistant coach, a job has allowed Mike to not only stay close to his sons, but his seven grandkids as well. 
“I’m just kind of ignoring my own kids right now. I’ve moved right to the grandkids,” Mike said with a laugh. “And they don’t like it, but I said, ‘Too bad.'”
Still, Mike can’t help talking about his two sons, who followed his path to the NHL and continued the family’s hockey tradition.
“They worked toward a dream,” Mike Foligno said. “They worked hard and smart and realized the opportunity to play at the NHL level, the highest level possible. If you really want something, you’ll always give yourself the best chance to make it, and I think that’s what they did.”t