Wednesday Dallas Stars Roundup: Decoding Miro Heiskanen's Road Back, How DeBoer Matches Up MacKinnon, and the Thin Line Between Fun and Foolhardy

Let's talk about some silly stuff and some serious stuff today

Today, the Dallas Stars practiced downtown at American Airlines Center before heading to the airport to fly to Colorado for Game 6 on Thursday.

One of the most notable things during practice today was that Ilya Lyubushkin was not on the ice. Instead, Miro Heiskanen skated in place of Lyubushkin next to Thomas Harley, though Pete DeBoer said after practice that Lyubushkin is fine, and that today was just a maintenance day.

It’s the playoffs, of course, so take that for whatever it’s worth. When only one player isn’t out there for practice, there’s usually a reason. But DeBoer says Lyubushkin is fine, so for now, I’d expect the same lineup in Game 6 that we saw in Game 5.

Here’s the deal: until Heiskanen returns to the Stars’ lineup, everyone is going to be scrutinizing his ever move for signs of an impending activation. If he eats candy in the press box, people are going to suss out whether it’s gummy worms or gummy bears, and they’ll draw conclusions from either one.

Pete DeBoer’s approach this year with long-injured players has been, generally, not to confirm they’re in the lineup until after morning skate the day of the game, then activating them before the game that evening. That approachs allows the player not to have to answer questions from the media right before their return, as injured players are usually not available to the media.

(Aside: a notable exception to this was when Colorado activated Gabriel Landeskog before Game 2 in Dallas, but did not make him available to the media. Even though Landeskog didn’t play in Game 2, he ought to have been made available after he was activated.)

So, the biggest thing to look for with Heiskanen is when he is activated off the roster. If he’s not activated well before warmups, he can’t play.

To be honest, I’m not convinced DeBoer will really run Heiskanen through an obvious set of practice drills in order to herald his return. This really feels more like there’s a medical timeline they’re abiding by, and until Heiskanen reaches the proper point in that timeline, he won’t play. But that could happen any day. Or, it couldn’t.

Some of the process is probably related to flexion and pain, i.e. “Can you do make a hard cut without it hurting?” That’s something Heiskanen can practice in the sessions he’s had outside of morning skates and big practices, like when he skated on Tuesday with Jason Robertson and Nils Lundkvist in Frisco. My guess would be that those are the times he’s really testing certain things moreso than a regular set of morning skate drills.

Heiskanen today also rotated with Esa Lindell on the second power play unit, with Lindell taking the first turn. Sam Nestler of DLLS reported this same thing at the Stars’ practice in Colorado before Game 4, too. Again, this is something that’s good for Heiskanen to be doing, especially with new players, but I see it more as some bonus familiarity than a significant step.

The question a few folks asked today was: why would Heiskanen take Lyubushkin’s spot rather than someone like Matt Dumba, another right-hand shot who has been playing NHL games more recently?