Wild center Ryan Hartman was so angry after an 8-3 loss to the Dallas Stars on Sunday that he declined to speak to a reporter for fear of saying something he might regret. After a night’s rest and long practice, he had composed his thoughts.

“We’re a little discombobulated,” he said Monday.

It’s an apt descriptor for what fans have seen during a 5-8-2 start that has the Wild buried in the NHL’s Central division standings, nine points behind first-place Dallas and two points ahead of last-place Chicago and Nashville, after making the playoffs in three straight full seasons.

The Wild insist it’s an anomaly, that they’re just not clicking, and if that’s the case, long-term injuries to key players such as Jared Spurgeon and Matt Boldy didn’t help. But as the Wild landed in Sweden on Tuesday for a pair of NHL Global Series games, one has to wonder if 2023-24 is the Season of Discombobulation.

At the season’s onset, the Sweden trip promised a week of team bonding and exciting new experience for many players, but this has become mostly a business trip. Minnesota needs to take points, or at least something positive to build on, in games Saturday against Ottawa and Sunday versus Toronto.

“We’re done thinking about what happened (on Sunday),” Hartman said. “It’s early, but it’s not that early. We need to go there and get four points.”

The Wild seemed to find their footing when they rallied from a three-goal deficit to snap a four-game skid in a shootout victory over the New York Rangers and started a three-game New York road trip with a solid 4-2 victory over a good Islanders team.

Then came another three losses, the latest a disaster against Dallas in the team’s first division game this season; the Wild surrendered a franchise-record five power-play goals, plus two shorties.

Afterward, an exasperated Wild coach Dean Evason told reporters, “I’m not going to call out a lot of guys in front of you guys, but there’s some guys that sucked tonight.”

It’s complicated …

Statistically, it’s easy to pinpoint the glaring weakness. The Wild have surrendered 63 goals this season, 4.20 a game, which ranks better than only San Jose’s 66 goals and 4.40 average. In addition, the team’s penalty kill is the NHL’s worst, with a 63.5 percent success rate and 19 power-play goals-against.

But in the breakneck pace of an NHL team’s ecosystem, it’s not so simple as blaming the blue line, which lost veteran Matt Dumba to free agency this summer, or goalies — who have been hung out to dry a lot this season — or even the PK. Teams tend to commit penalties, for instance, when they’re not playing well at even strength — and the Wild’s 69 penalties taken ranks seventh-worst among 32 NHL teams.

“We shoot ourselves in the foot being in the box that many times,” said Spurgeon, who has been back for two games after being injured in a preseason game.

The Wild also have drawn more penalties (73) than opponents, but their penalty play, scoring at a 17.3 percent rate, ranks 21st.

Discombobulated. Passes aren’t finding tape, players are hesitating to support and often aren’t in the crease for passes and rebounds.

“We’re not necessarily playing together as a group,” Hartman said. “I think there’s a lot of guys with the puck and we get in trouble, and instead of dealing with the trouble ourselves, we pass our trouble off to the next guy.

“That makes hockey very difficult when you’re getting the puck and getting trouble passed around. I’m guilty of it. A lot of guys are guilty of it.”

… or is it?

It’s also clear that Wild players are often being outmuscled in the slot, outhustled for loose pucks and losing one-on-one battles on the boards. Asked after Sunday’s loss how players might be shown they’re not playing as hard as they can, or think they are, Evason said, “There’s mirrors everywhere, so you could look at that.”

“There’s mirrors in their homes, their mirrors,” he added. “So, if you’re honest with yourself and accountable, which most athletes are, you look in the mirror and say, ‘It’s not good enough.’ So, hopefully we all do that.”

Evason said the team would work on more systematic changes to the penalty kill in the runup to Saturday’s game against the Senators, but he acknowledged that at some point, the schematic becomes secondary to effort.

“The guy who’s scoring the goal that you’re competing against seems like he’s got more will (to score) than you do to keep the puck out of the net,” Evason said. “Do we challenge and show and talk and all that good stuff? Yeah. But sure, we have to do a better job in those areas, to get that puck that’s sitting there out of that dangerous area.”

The Wild could use more from their top offensive players, as well.

Kirill Kaprizov, who missed Monday’s practice for what Evason called “maintenance,” has been productive offensively with 15 points in 15 games, but is a team-worst minus-11. Points leader Mats Zuccarello is minus-7. Marcus Johansson has scored one goal, and Boldy (1-7—8) hasn’t looked like the player who scored 32 goals last season and signed a seven-year, $49 million contract extension last January.

“We get paid a lot of money to coach, to play, that you gotta get the job done,” Evason said after Sunday’s loss. “You get paid to score goals? Score goals. And I’m talking the whole roster, the lowest-paid guy to the highest-paid guy. Sure, the highest-paid guy should score more. The lowest-paid guy should stop them; he’s not doing his job either. We need more out of our top guys, for sure.”

The Wild were scheduled to do some light off-ice training after arriving in Stockholm on Tuesday, then have practices scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.

“No matter where you’re going, whether it’s Sweden or another city, it’s the same thing. You’ve got to work our way out of it,” Spurgeon said. “No one is feeling sorry for us here. It’s a long season, and this group in here has got to be the ones that come together and get us out of it.”

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