This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Miro Heiskanen
Dallas Stars Defense
50 games, a 54.9 per cent chance share, and a knee that decided the club's season.
| 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 | DAL | 50 | 5 | 20 | 25 | +7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 108 | 4.6 | 25:10 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 475 | 58 | 225 | 283 | +21 | 142 | 12 | 0 | 10 | 1098 | 5.3 | 24:30 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
5 goals and 20 assists in 50 games for 25 points, plus-7, on 25:10 a night — the heaviest per-game workload on the club by a distance.
54.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 90th percentile and the best figure among Dallas defencemen. He was hurt in late January and the club’s expected-goals-against rate did not recover; it finished 27th in the league.
The Finesse Game
The most effortless skater on the roster and one of the best defensive defencemen in hockey, which is an unusual pair of things to say about the same 26-year-old. He closes a gap without appearing to accelerate, and attackers arrive at the blue line with nowhere to put the puck.
The first pass is excellent and the decision-making is close to error-free. What he has never had is a shooter’s instinct — 108 shots in 50 games from a median of 49 feet, and 5 goals. He is a defenceman who runs a breakout, not one who runs a power play, which is why the offensive totals have never matched the reputation.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 197, and he does not play a physical game at all. He ends plays by arriving early, and when he does not arrive early he is beaten. 10 penalty minutes in 50 games.
The body is now the story. A serious knee injury in his prime, an absence that lasted into the playoffs, and a club that spent three months finding out what it looks like without him.
The Intangibles
The quiet centre of everything Dallas does defensively, and the one player here who cannot be replaced by committee. The club conceded chances at the 27th-best rate in the league in a season he missed 32 games of; that is not a coincidence.
At 26 the skill is not the question. The knee is. Everything this roster is built to do in April assumes 25 minutes a night from him, and it has now assumed that twice and not received it.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 990 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.9%
- 91st pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.6%
- 87th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 24 against. Expected: 47.6 and 39.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 315 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 990 minutes at five-on-five
- Esa Lindell22%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.9% — 4.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 990 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Harley | 59.7% | 52.2% | 50.8% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 51.6% | 56.6% | 51.0% |
| Jason Robertson | 55.8% | 54.4% | 52.7% |
59.7% together, 52.2% for him apart and 50.8% 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
163 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.