Marcus Foligno Autograph Card

Marcus Foligno is quietly having his most productive season in the NHL so far, one point behind the career-high 23 points he put up in three straight seasons from 2015 until 2018, with over 20 games left in the regular season calendar.

He's only made the playoffs once - in 2017-18 in his first season with the Minnesota Wild, with one goal in five games played and no less than 16 penalty minutes. The 6'3", 225-pound former fourth-round pick (104th overall in 2009) is usually good for three to five fights per year, standing up for his teammates at every opportunity.

He's cemented his position as a shut-down checking forward, finishing in the pluses (+5 as we speak) every year despite playing on poor teams. Relative to his teammates, he's actually a more positive force out there than more expensive options and his $2.85M cap hit is good for another year after this one.

Glad to see he's building his own path without being in the shadow of his father Mike (a former Buffalo Sabres star)  and brother Nick, captain of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Here he is wearing the Sabres' 2010-12 "Wordmark" blue (third) jersey on card #CS-MF from Panini's 2012-13 Certified set and Certified Signatures sub-set:

It features a blue-sharpied, on-stick autograph. It's actually a very nice silver foil card, but my scanner refused to acknowledge it as such.

Marcus Foligno Team Canada Jersey Card

Marcus Foligno is becoming a reliable, hard-working checking winger who can at times chip in with timely goals. Casual fans might not have noticed him these past couple of years because ''timely'' was hard to associate with the Buffalo Sabres, but in 2013-14, out of his 7 goals, 6 were at even strength, 1 was shorthanded, and a whopping 3 (nearly half) were game-winners.

While he was a point-per-game player in the AHL with the Rochester Americans in 2012-13, he didn't really have a history of doing so even in Juniors, where he only achieved the feat in his fourth and final season (2010-11), the second year after his hometown Sabres made him the 104th pick at the 2009 draft.

He'll still barely be 24 when the next season gets underway, so he hasn't hit his peak nor exactly found his groove yet, but I foresee a reliable, 10-goal, 25-to-30-point man down the line.

His father, Mike Foligno, was a Sabres great when I was a kid, surpassing the 50-point mark 5 times with 5 seasons over 25 goals, including a peak of 41 in 1985-86; he ended up posting over 700 points in over 1000 NHL games while also suiting up for the Detroit Red Wings, Toronto Maple Leafs, and playing his final 39 games with the Florida Panthers.

As a local kid, Marcus gets a lot of attention in Buffalo, often appearing in team promos, and because he's good-looking, a (probably) mock Twitter page has him hitting on lady-fans and calling out/laughing at fellow players in the style of Roberto Luongo's page, but a tad ''jockier''.

Of course, my main reason for featuring this card today is because it features him playing for Team Canada at the 2001 World Juniors (held in Buffalo), wearing his father's #17 (he wears #82 with the Sabres):

It's card #TC-MF from Upper Deck's 2013-14 SP Game-Used Edition series, showing him in Canada's red (''visitors'') uniform, with a matching game-worn jersey swatch.