Heiskanen’s workload puts a demand on Dallas’ defensive depth

Miro Heiskanen averaged 25:28 on the ice last season. Even before considering what he did with the puck, that is a formidable amount of responsibility to attach to one player.

Dallas retained Heiskanen in the defense group it announced Monday. The question behind the list is whether the supporting options can make the workload more flexible. Simply having another name available does little good if every difficult decision still leads the coaches back to the same player.

Begin with what Heiskanen created before considering how much he scored. He finished the 2025-26 regular season with 54 assists in 77 games, a figure that explains his importance more clearly than his nine goals. His 63 points came mainly through distribution and involvement rather than an unusually productive shooting stretch.

He took 148 shots and converted 6.1% of them, which means Dallas was not depending on a defenseman suddenly turning into a high-volume finisher.

That distinction is central to the depth question. Replacing Heiskanen’s influence cannot be reduced to asking another defenseman to shoot more often. Dallas needs additional players who can move the puck, make the first useful pass and manage difficult possessions without every complicated shift being rerouted through Heiskanen.

The next two workloads show that the Stars have a meaningful foundation beyond their leading defenseman. Thomas Harley averaged 23:03 in the 2025-26 regular season, 2:25 behind Heiskanen. Esa Lindell averaged 23:14, a difference of 2:14.

Those figures do not make either player interchangeable with Heiskanen, and they do not prove that one should simply inherit his assignments. They do show that Dallas already had two defensemen operating in a substantial workload range.

Harley added 30 assists and 36 points in 70 games. Lindell produced 26 assists and 32 points while appearing in all 82. The useful comparison is not that Dallas has two secret versions of Heiskanen waiting behind him.

It is that Harley and Lindell already combined substantial responsibility with meaningful passing offense. They give the coaching staff credible places to distribute more of the connective work.

The remaining options should be judged by whether they expand the coaches’ choices. That could mean earning trust with puck movement, reliable positioning or decisions under pressure. Those are standards for the season ahead, not assignments disclosed Monday. A roster can contain enough players while still leaving a team reluctant to distribute its difficult work.

There is a substantial argument for keeping Heiskanen central. His 63 points and 54 assists last season were ahead of Harley’s and Lindell’s totals. Dallas should want its strongest contributors involved when the game demands their skills. The workload figure alone does not demonstrate misuse, and lowering it merely to achieve a smaller number would confuse the measurement with the objective.

The more useful objective is choice. Harley and Lindell already handled significant workloads, so Dallas has experienced alternatives near the top of the group. The further question is whether the rest of the defense can give the staff more occasions to use a different combination confidently. That would make the depth meaningful without demanding a predetermined minute reduction for Heiskanen.

Coaches face a real tradeoff here. Giving an established player another assignment can feel safer than finding out how someone else handles it. Yet the latter is how a team discovers whether its depth works beyond practice.

Those opportunities need to be earned, and they may involve accepting an imperfect shift while a player learns. The point is to build more dependable choices before the team urgently needs them.

For Dallas, the best evidence of useful depth would be a difficult stretch in which Heiskanen can remain on the bench because another combination is doing the job. His importance would survive that development quite comfortably.

Sources

Dallas Stars: roster announcement

The Hockey News: Dallas roster

NHL: 2025–26 Dallas statistics