Marcus Foligno expresses guilt after being first Wild player to test positive for COVID-19

Marcus Foligno of the Minnesota Wild admits he didn't feel great after his team's last game against the Colorado Avalanche on January 30th, but put it down as playing nine games in 17 days to start the season.

«I didn't have a great night of sleep, kind of just felt a little bit achy and chills a little bit, but didn't think anything of it, really,» Foligno told The Athletic. «I just thought I was maybe fatigued."

The next morning, a Sunday, Foligno's PCR test showed he was positive for COVID-19, something Foligno said he felt awful about.

"I felt really guilty. It's kind of like you brought it in here,» Foligno said. «You never want to be the first one or just, in general, get it. It's a guilty feeling, which is weird because you shouldn't feel guilty. But that's just how it is, and when you're the first one, everyone kind of sees your name pop up first and then the domino effect throughout the team after that. But whether guys had symptoms or didn't show positive until later after I did, it is what it is. We're playing through a pandemic. These things are going to happen. But the positive out of this is that everyone hopefully is healed up pretty soon and we can get our full team back and have a good rest of the season."

Following Foligno's positive test, the NHL suspended play for the Wild after several other players tested positive as well. Foligno has now been cleared to practice again, as have several other members of the team. The NHL has not yet said how it'll reshuffle the six postponed games, but that will come.

As for how Foligno contracted COVID, he's convinced it was during games against the L.A. Kings on January 26th and the 28th. After the game on the 28th, the Kings' Andreas Athanasiou was pulled from the lineup and added to the COVID protocol list, followed shortly after by Blake Lizotte.

Foligno added it took about five days before he started to feel better, but notes you can hear in his voice even now just how sick he was.

"It's going to take a couple skates to get fully back to where I was and feeling like I did in the L.A. series,» Foligno said. «I just think that the biggest thing for me is timing and getting that back and feeling the puck. I don't think it's going to be tough to get it back. You just want to push yourself to make sure your conditioning is back up and you're ready to go when we play our next game."

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