This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Miro Heiskanen

The highest chance share of any defenceman in this edition playing twenty-four minutes a night, on the club with the fourth-best suppression in hockey.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2018-19	DAL	82	12	21	33	-14	16	2	0	4	182	6.6	23:07
2019-20	DAL	68	8	27	35	+14	12	0	0	0	163	4.9	23:46
2020-21	DAL	55	8	19	27	-9	12	3	0	1	121	6.6	24:58
2021-22	DAL	70	5	31	36	+3	24	3	0	1	156	3.2	24:53
2022-23	DAL	79	11	62	73	+12	32	2	0	2	206	5.3	25:29
2023-24	DAL	71	9	45	54	+8	36	2	0	2	162	5.6	24:32
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	425	53	205	258	+14	132	12	0	10	990	5.3	24:26

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

Seventy-one games, 9 goals and 45 assists for 54 points, 2 on the power play, 24:32 a night and plus-8. He took 57.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,388 minutes, the 95th percentile, and his ice went 68-60 against an expectation of 65.65-48.17.

Fifteen goals of scoring missing at five-on-five behind the man who plays the most on a club that scored 298 goals. The chances against arrived exactly as predicted; the chances for did not convert, and that is the club’s shooters rather than him. The share is the number to keep, and it is the highest of any defenceman in this edition who played twenty-four minutes a night — ahead of Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and Roman Josi.

The Finesse Game

He skates the puck out of trouble rather than passing it out. The stride is long and effortless and he changes direction without losing speed, and a forecheck that has him trapped along the wall is usually wrong about that.

He walks the line and holds it, and 205 assists in 425 games is a first-pair playmaking rate produced mostly without a power play — he had 45 assists last season and only 2 power-play goals. One hundred and sixty-two shots at a median of 50 feet with 67 per cent from beyond 40; the shot is a delivery mechanism rather than a weapon and 53 goals in 425 games says so.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 197 and defends with position and stick. He does not punish anybody and does not need to — 36 penalty minutes in 71 games at 24:32 a night is a low rate for the hardest assignment on a hundred-point club.

He does not clear his crease by force and loses net-front battles to heavy forwards. The club employs Esa Lindell, Ilya Lyubushkin and Brendan Smith for exactly that reason.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2017 out of Espoo, six seasons, 425 games and 24:26 a night across all of them. He has been the best defenceman on a contender since he was 21 and has never been the story.

He is 25 and the club’s structure is built on him being able to leave his own end with the puck. Nothing in the record suggests that changes.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.7% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +4.7, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:33 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He skates the puck out of trouble rather than passing it out.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He walks the line and holds it, and 205 assists in 425 games is a first-pair playmaking rate produced mostly without a power play — he had 45 assists last season and only 2 power-play goals.”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He does not clear his crease by force and loses net-front battles to heavy forwards.”
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“he changes direction without losing speed, and a forecheck that has him trapped along the wall is usually wrong about that”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,388 minutes

Expected goals: 57.7%; 95th pct
Shot attempts: 57%; 95th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 68 for, 60 against. Expected: 65.7 and 48.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

57th

Numbers

95th

The numbers rank him 38 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 71 games

Top speed: 23.4 mph; 97th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.42 a game
Distance: 3.58 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.6 mph; 75th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1388 minutes at five-on-five

Thomas Harley44%
Ryan Suternow STL42%

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club: DAL took 54.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.7% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,388 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Thomas Harley	60.0%	55.9%	51.4%
Ryan Suter	54.3%	60.1%	52.9%
Jason Robertson	59.8%	56.8%	57.1%

60.0% together, 55.9% for him apart and 51.4% for Harley apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

239 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.