A lot of ink has been spent on the Wild’s myriad injuries this season, all of which played a part in the team missing the postseason for just the second time in 12 seasons.

But on the day the players cleaned out their lockers and went through their exit interviews, the team’s injury issues were mostly on the back burner. The primary message from everyone involved — from the players to general manager Bill Guerin — was that the team just didn’t play well enough.

That, of course, was easy to see for anyone who paid attention to Minnesota’s NHL team this season. What was most interesting were the internal theories about why the team stumbled.

“I’ve always said in years past how much I would hate to play against us,” veteran forward Ryan Hartman said. “And this year, I don’t know if I could have said the same thing about our group and how sometimes we approached games.”

The team surrendered too many leads, and became fragile when opponents scored on them early, which happened often during a 5-10-4 start that cost coach Dean Evason his job. The penalty kill struggled all season, finishing third worst in the NHL. A handful of veteran players had bad seasons.

And while the Wild rebounded under new coach John Hynes — and in fact played winning hockey after Nov. 28 — they were never able to win when they were within spitting distance of an elusive playoff spot.

The Wild started the season aiming to win a first-round playoff series for the first time since 2015 — or getting over the hump

“We never got to the hump,” Guerin noted.

Instead, one loss spilled into two, two into three and three into a couple of serious skids from which the team was never able to fully recover.

“It felt like early on in games, we let up a lot of goals right away early in games, and I think mentally it fatigued us,” veteran wing Marcus Foligno said. “It felt like we were coming from behind and trying to play it from behind the entire game, and then the puck would drop and then you look back up and it was already one for them.

“That happened a lot, and too often early on, probably the first 20 games for this team. You can’t just play hockey like that. You’ve gotta be able to jump on teams and be that team that can play with leads, and we rarely did that. So, I think that mentally exhausted us. And then it got tougher, and practices get tighter, practices get more serious, and it just becomes a little bit harder at the rink and it’s uncomfortable.”

Foligno, of course, was one of many key contributors to miss substantial time because of injuries this season. The alternate captain played only 55 games and underwent season-ending surgery this month to repair core muscles. Captain Jared Spurgeon played in only 16 games before season-ending surgery on his back and hips.

Matt Boldy (shoulder) and Freddy Geadreau (ribs) missed games early, and Mats Zuccarello missed 10 games because of injuries. And after leading scorer Kirill Kaprizov suffered broken ribs in a Dec. 30 loss at Winnipeg, the Wild lost 8 of 9, erasing the gains they had made after Hynes joined the team.

Yet only Kaprizov pointed to injuries as the team’s downfall, and that was likely because he was the team’s best player for a fourth straight year — 46 goals and 97 points — and unwilling to throw anyone under a bus.

“Good teams don’t lose two in a row, and they don’t lose three in a row. They don’t let it slide like that,” Hartman said. “It happened too much. We gave up leads throughout this year. That definitely needs to be better.”

Guerin was pleased to hear it because, he said, injuries were a factor, but not the ultimate reason Minnesota missed the playoffs.

“When I hear that our players say that we were mentally fragile, I would agree with them,” the GM said. “And if they said that they weren’t competitive enough in the big games, … I would agree. We have to find our swagger again.”

The question is, how?

The 2024-25 roster is close to locked in because of long-term veteran contracts, and a looming $14.7 million salary cap hit — the remnant of buying out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in 2021 — leaves the team with few options in free agency.

Health is one answer, but it’s always a crapshoot — and almost always an issue for every NHL team. The other is improvement. A better start. Better seasons from underperforming veterans. The team’s first training camp under Hynes. More fortitude.

And, Hartman said, a return to the identity the team has claimed, in good years and bad, for most of its 24 NHL seasons.

“I think there’s always another level that you can bring, and I think we do have that in our room,” Hartman said. “Obviously, no years are the same. Obviously things are going to look different each and every year. But we need to be a team that no one wants to play against.”

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