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.”

Related Articles

Filip Gustavsson on future with Minnesota Wild: ‘We’ll see’

Montreal scores twice in the final minutes to beat Minnesota in PWHL game

Kraken use short-handed breakaways to rally past Wild in season finale

With lottery help, Wild could pick as high as No. 3 in 2024 NHL entry draft

Marc-Andre Fleury signs one-year extension with Wild

As a Korean adoptee raised in North Dakota, Jennifer Weir tells people she grew up with no reference for her own Asian-ness. Her journey of self-discovery led her to an unexpected place — the traditionally male-dominated art of Japanese taiko drumming, a full-body performance experience that Weir uses to connect with a community of mostly female performers through her St. Paul-based nonprofit, TaikoArts Midwest.

The 2016 Knight Arts Challenge winners included TaikoArts Midwest, who received $30,000 to expand the impact and accessibility of taiko, the ensemble drumming rooted in Japanese traditions, with a monthly series of free pop-up concerts throughout St. Paul. (Photo courtesy of Knight Arts Foundation: Rich Ryan)

Tired of not getting her studio lease renewed every few years “because we are so loud,” Weir has big plans to take TaikoArts up a notch, so to speak, with new programming and its own dedicated performance center in St. Paul’s North End.

She’s fundraising $2 million, most of it to renovate and soundproof a vacant warehouse at 449 Front Ave., east of Dale Street, with the hope that legislation carried by state Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, will provide another $2 million through a cash appropriation.

Nonprofits seek funding from Legislature

It’s no small ask in the waning days of the legislative session, especially at a time when a number of St. Paul-based arts and cultural institutions are seeking both private philanthropic donations and public dollars to open new public-facing centers in the capital city.

They’re looking to state bonding dollars, the state Legacy Act and more to plant a permanent flag of sorts in St. Paul, but even Pappas herself has cautioned that this will be a difficult year to find state dollars for nonprofit efforts, given difficult budget forecasts a year from now.

“Everyone (at the state) is saying ‘There’s no cash for nonprofits this year,” Weir acknowledged.

Weir, who is featured in the 90-minute documentary “Finding Her Beat” on Amazon, is nonetheless hopeful that lawmakers will smile on her proposal, which she said would bring some badly-needed vitality and community outreach to a high-minority neighborhood lacking in arts organizations, fostering the sense of community she sometimes found lacking as a child.

“We have just slightly under a year left in our current lease (on Fairview Avenue), and the rumblings are they want to redevelop into more of a commercial space, instead of nonprofits,” Weir said. “One of the biggest taiko groups in the country has moved more than 20 times. You never really anchor into a neighborhood. It’s really hard to find space for taiko.”

Other arts groups

Among other St. Paul-based arts centers in various stages of planning:

• The Playwrights’ Center: This storied workshop and performance space for up and coming playwrights broke ground last fall on a new 19,000-square-foot center at 710 Raymond Ave. in St. Paul, an adaptive reuse of a 1913 building that will span double the organization’s existing footprint in Minneapolis. The center, which works with 25 to 30 “core writers” at a time and many others through classes, fellowships and residencies, was founded in 1971 and workshops around 70 new plays annually. A $19 million fundraising campaign launched last year and a new producing artistic director joined in January. The new center could open to thespians and their fans within the 2024-25 season.

A rendering of the Playwrights’ Center’s new home in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone sits on an easel inside the building on Feb. 13, 2023. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

• Minnesota Latino Museum: State Rep. Maria Isa, state Rep. Samakab Hussein, Pappas and others are promoting the concept of a museum dedicated to the state’s Latin experience, which would be the first in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. Organizers have scoped out a site on Water Street, by Harriet Island Regional Park and the Mississippi River, that would draw on the immigrant experience of the West Side. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, the St. Paul Port Authority and others have written letters of support to state lawmakers. “We have a request with the state for $10 million,” said lead organizer Aaron Johnson-Ortiz, executive director of (Neo)Muralismos de México. “We’re very happy to be seeing all these community arts organizations doing great work, and we’re excited for our museum, as well.”

• Hmong Cultural Center Museum: The museum, which opened near Western and University avenues in 2021, now spans 2,000 square feet following the recent addition of exhibit space. The new space showcases photos from the mid-to-late 1960s donated by the family of a former comptroller in the USAID office in Vientiane, Laos, and houses a newly-expanded gift shop and cultural artifact exhibit. The addition was made possible by a two-year direct appropriation of about $288,000 from the state’s Legacy Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, which also funded new track lighting throughout the museum.

Hmong Cultural Center program director Mark Pfeifer and executive director Txongpao Lee pose for a photo next to a display of story cloths and flower cloths at the museum on University and Western Avenues in St. Paul on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

• Wakan Tipi Center: Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi — the organization formerly known as the Lower Phalen Creek Project — plans a $13.5 million nature and cultural center near downtown Kellogg Boulevard, Fourth Street and Commercial Street, at a site located within the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, a 27-acre nature reserve. The goal is to showcase the Daḳota history, language and values in a building that will feature an exhibit hall, classrooms, ceremony space, community gathering area, teaching kitchen and teaching gardens. Construction was put out to bid around January, and the 7,500-square-foot center is expected to open in late 2025. The capital campaign launched in 2018 with $3 million in state funds.

• Victoria Theater Arts Center: Organizers behind the future community-driven arts center and performance space at University Avenue and Avon Street say they expect to reopen in August what had once been a silent theater, Prohibition-era speakeasy, cabaret and then retail storefront. A $6.8 million project began in May of last year and was halfway done by December.. The Victoria Theater Arts Center will lead an Earth Day clean-up from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Monday in the parking lot of the Model Cities building, as well as a youth-led music and arts festival, “Speak Out And Lead (SOAL),” from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on May 19. The latter is in collaboration with Springboard for the Arts.

Organizers of the Victoria Theater project celebrate the purchase of the building, which sits near the Victoria Station light rail stop on University Avenue. centered cafe, arts and performance space. (Courtesy of the Victoria Theater Arts Center)

TaikoArts Midwest: Weir said she has raised about $500,000 toward her $4 million goal, which would allow her to convert the empty warehouse at 449 Front Ave. into a soundproofed drumming center. Plans include a multipurpose event space for community activities, and the nonprofit’s strategic plan calls for targeted outreach to homeless youth, youth of color and the gay/lesbian/transgender community. TaikoArts Midwest, which was founded in 2016 and currently leases space at the Fairview Business Center, will host a Mother’s Day concert on May 12 at the downtown St. Paul Ordway Center for the Performing Arts. The show will feature renowned drummers from Japan, Canada and Minnesota featured in the documentary “Finding Her Beat.”

Related Articles

CHS Field to host Viking C.J. Ham’s charity softball game

Speak Out And Lead to host Youth Arts Festival in St. Paul’s Frogtown

Stillwater Area Public Schools taps former St. Paul, Rochester administrator for assistant superintendent

Letters: Minnesota needs a task force on reckless motorcycle riders

MPCA gives St. Paul foundry 30 days to reduce lead emissions

Stylistically, the Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns couldn’t be much more different.

The Timberwolves have built a brand centered on big ball. They use their size and length to suffocate you, particularly on defense.

The Suns are flush with star wings, each of whom can create his own shot at the snap of his fingers.

Aesthetically, nothing about the two teams is really the same.

Yet the stories are somewhat similar. Both franchises were on promising tracks following the 2021-22 season. The Timberwolves broke through with a young, upstart squad to get into the playoffs and give the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies a true scare in Round 1.

Phoenix posted the best record in the NBA that season, only to have illness and Luka Doncic send the Suns home in an embarrassing Game 7 defeat in the West semifinals.

Then, both franchises decided to push in chips. For Minnesota, that meant dealing an array of players and picks to Utah for center Rudy Gobert.

Phoenix dealt a similar haul at the ensuing trade deadline for Kevin Durant.

Both teams did so to enhance their chances to compete for a championship in the coming years. The early results for either were not good. The Timberwolves had to survive the play-in just to get into last season’s playoffs, where they suffered a quick exit at the hands of the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets bounced the Suns with relative ease in the following round.

But both moves now appear to be paying off for both teams. Gobert is at the center of Minnesota’s historically good defense. Durant leads Phoenix’s three-headed monster of scoring weapons. Both teams are legitimate threats to win the West.

But only one will get out of the first round, which starts Saturday at Target Center. And Phoenix, the No. 6 seed, is favored to do so. Part of the reason for that is because the Suns beat the Timberwolves in all three regular-season meetings.

But another big reason is because Phoenix has Durant and Devin Booker. Durant has won multiple NBA titles with various teams, while Booker was the best player on a squad that won the West three years ago. They have playoff reputations.

And a couple of the best players on the Wolves’ roster do not.

That’s not speaking on Anthony Edwards, who has thoroughly impressed in his two trips to the playoffs to date. He was brilliant even in defeat against Memphis and Denver. Edwards is known as a big-game hunter.

But Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns are viewed in a dissimilar light. That’s why when the Timberwolves dealt for Gobert, basketball fans and analysts around the country threw up their arms and made jokes. Those two? Together?

Minnesota has no doubt felt a sense of vindication this season as when those two have been in the lineup together, the Wolves have gone 41-19. Critics attempting to tear down the Twin Towers went largely silent.

But the criticisms surrounding that trade even when it happened were never really about the regular season. You don’t trade numerous first-round picks for victories in the regular season. Questions were far more about whether a lineup with two legitimate 7-footers could defend in the playoffs.

And we’re about to get that answer. Because Phoenix can legitimately extend and stress a big-ball lineup with its skill and shooting. Gobert will have to dominate the paint on both ends to mitigate any speed advantage the Suns may generate

Towns will be put in uncomfortable situations on defense, while being asked to take advantage of mismatches on offense. He will also be the first person asked to punish Phoenix for placing too much defensive attention on Edwards.

“I see KAT being the MVP of the series, if we win it,” Edwards said. “He’s the best player on the team. You put two and three (players) on me and you leave best player on the team 1 on 1, that’s something we live for. He takes the responsibility on defense, and if he does a great job, we’ll come out on top.”

The hopes of a series riding on the shoulders of Towns may be a scary proposition for Wolves fans who have witnessed the big man’s postseason struggles firsthand over the years.

Gobert has had similar experiences, not necessarily in his own play, but in the ways playoff opponents manipulate his size and positioning to greatly limit the defensive impact that’s so prominent in the regular season.

Every time Gobert wins another Defensive Player of the Year award, a “yeah, but the playoffs” is surely waiting right around the corner. This series — and these playoffs — are Gobert’s chance at a rebuttal.

“It’s an amazing opportunity. And that’s what I’ve always worked for and dreamed of. Always wanted to win a championship,” Gobert said. “At the end of the day, I think the highest mark of respect is people challenging you to do the things that you haven’t done yet. And I haven’t been past the second round yet, so how can I be mad at them for challenging me to do that?”

Frankly, Gobert and Towns are challenging themselves — and their team — to do that.

They know their reputations. Everyone does.

“Everybody knows who’s won championships, who is battle-tested and who hasn’t been,” Wolves guard Mike Conley said. “I think that’s just the normal info we get.”

A winning playoff reputation builds cache. A losing reputation cuts at patience. Phoenix’s long-term core is pretty well cemented for years to come based on the salary cap sheet, as well as confidence. Durant and Booker have earned that belief, even if Phoenix get bounced by Minnesota.

But if the opposite occurs, and the Timberwolves, fresh off a 56-win season, are ousted in Round 1, the voices suggesting Gobert and Towns can’t get it done when it matters most will only get louder as their supply of ammo grows.

Towns acknowledged winning this series is “really, really important.”

“Like, probably one of the most important things in my career so far here in Minnesota. Have a great chance to do something. There’s a lot on the line. We’ve got a lot to play for,” Towns said. “There’s obviously a big hunger here to be able to get to the second round. That’s something we haven’t done here in Minnesota for a long time.”

If they achieve it, everything the Timberwolves accomplished during the regular season will be validated, and the Wolves’ narrative will likely read much differently moving forward.

“We saw it with Giannis, we saw it with Jokic. Everyone always had something to say about their game and about who they are as players until they won a championship,” Gobert said. “And then what did people have to say after that? Not much. They can only respect. So I have to earn their respect.”

Anthony Edwards #5 of the Minnesota Timberwolves looks on between teammates Karl-Anthony Towns #32 and Rudy Gobert #27 during the second quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers at the Wells Fargo Center on December 20, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)

Related Articles

Keys to Timberwolves’ first-round playoff series with Phoenix (plus, a prediction)

Jace Frederick: Timberwolves know they need better starts to win series versus Phoenix. That should include winning Game 1

Anthony Edwards takes his play to another level in the playoffs. But what would that look like in Timberwolves-Suns series?

Matchup issues or not, Timberwolves’ first-round opponent Phoenix would be a tough out for anyone

Conley’s Corner: A vision realized, but not yet complete for Timberwolves’ Mike Conley