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.
54.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 85th 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.
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
54.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 49.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +4.7, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:48 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
“one of the best defensive defencemen in hockey”
“He closes a gap without appearing to accelerate, and attackers arrive at the blue line with nowhere to put the puck.”
“6-2 and 197, and he does not play a physical game at all.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 990 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.1%
- 86th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.4%
- 85th 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: 42 for, 37 against. Expected: 47.8 and 40.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 637 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 50 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 80th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.32 a game
- Distance
- 3.64 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.4 mph
- 71st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
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 54.1% — 3.4 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 | 59.2% | 51.1% | 50.8% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 51.0% | 55.8% | 49.7% |
| Jason Robertson | 53.8% | 54.2% | 53.7% |
59.2% together, 51.1% 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.