The Harsh Reality of the Continued Absence of Miro Heiskanen

The Stars will once again have to win a big playoff game without their number one defenseman

In case you haven’t heard, Miro Heiskanen will not play in Game 3 on Sunday.

It’s a disappointing bit of news, especially after Dallas just saw firsthand what it can do for a team when they get a top defenseman back. Winnipeg, as you know, just saw Josh Morrissey return in Game 2 after a brief absence, and their power play looked rejuvenated as a result. Also, their entire team. It turns out getting great players back is a good thing.

Furthermore, the Jets’ defense as a whole is much more formidable top to bottom with Morrissey pushing everyone down a peg, and their third pairing now consists of Colin Miller and Haydn Fleury, with Luke Schenn getting benched, a tad surprisingly. But was is no surprise, broadly speaking, is that the Presidents’ Trophy winner has depth.

Dallas will not be so lucky when it comes to a similar return, or at least not yet. The Stars remain in the same boat they’ve been ever since Mark Stone collided with Heiskanen’s knee in January: asking Thomas Harley to do the vast majority of the offensive creation from the blue line like some kind of hockey version of Jason Bateman, trying to keep the Bluth Family together. And he’s doing his darndest, so far.

But with two pretty critical games in Dallas in the next three days, it looks like Harley will have to keep fulfilling that same request in the absence of one of the NHL’s premier defensemen. For Game 3, at least.

Miro Heiskanen has been at morning skates before playoff games.

To be clear, we don’t know Heiskanen’s status for Game 4 on Tuesday. Technically, he’s still day-to-day. But Game 3 made a lot of sense for Heiskanen’s return for the same reasons it made sense for Colorado when Gabriel Landeskog came back in that Game 3: It fired up the home crowd, and it allowed the most favorable deployment with the last line change.

So if the Stars aren’t ready to be bringing Heiskanen back Sunday, will two more days really make enough difference for Heiskanen’s knee that he can play in Game 4? I’m not exactly confident it will.

That makes the fact that Heiskanen isn’t making a Game 3 return—and that Deboer knows this for sure a day in advance—a pretty sobering announcement. And it’s giving me pause about when or if Heiskanen could return in this round at all.

To be clear, this isn’t reporting anything beyond what we’ve heard. I’ll talk you through my reasoning as of right now for slowing the optimism roll on Heiskanen’s return, because given how tight-lipped everyone is about injuries in the playoffs, getting anything more specific that what we’ve gotten so far is going to be extremely tough.

For now, all we know is the following:

• Heiskanen had knee surgery three-and-a-half months ago.

• Heiskanen has been skating since late March

• Pete DeBoer has said within the last week that Miro Heiskanen “will come in” at some point during the second round.

• Heiskanen has only practiced on a defense pairing when Ilya Lyubushkin had a maintenance day last round. Otherwise, Heiskanen has been largely participating to the same degree as Matt Dumba, which is to say as a player not expected to play in the next game.

• Heiskanen is, for sure, out for Game 3, and “day to day” beyond that.

• When Heiskanen does come back, DeBoer does not plan to play him 26 minutes a night, and he has lowered expectations repeatedly in this regard.

Just as a refresher, let’s take stock of the most recent bits of news (if we can call it that) about Heiskanen’s status. I think three quotes from DeBoer over the last week should be pretty illustrative of where we’re at in terms of the information fog.