Miro Heiskanen skated alone Wednesday at the Dallas Stars’ Frisco practice base. Coach Glen Gulutzan also ruled him out of Thursday’s game against Winnipeg. That sequence gives Dallas a sensible boundary: solo skating is progress, but it is not permission to skip the harder test of practicing with the group.
The distinction is especially important because Heiskanen is not returning to a minor assignment. He has 3 goals, 8 assists and 11 points in 15 games, while averaging 24:53 per night. The scoring helps measure what Dallas misses.
The ice-time figure explains the shape of the vacancy. The Stars have been without a defenseman who routinely occupies a large share of the game, and no single replacement can simply collect those minutes without changing the demands on everyone else.
Thursday will be Heiskanen’s third consecutive absence since the upper-body injury sustained Nov. 3 against Washington. Wednesday brought no new diagnosis, and Gulutzan did not promise that the weekend would produce a return. The coach’s standard was group practice.
That makes sense as a threshold: skating alone can show that a player is moving, while a team session introduces the pace, contact and decisions that come from working around other players.
Dallas brings an encouraging season record to this interruption. Through 17 games, the Stars are 10-5-2 with 22 points, 48 goals scored and 39 allowed. Their penalty kill is operating at 89.7 percent, and the power play is at 27.5 percent. Those season figures describe the foundation Dallas wants to preserve while its blue line adjusts. They do not make Heiskanen’s role expendable.
The season’s ice-time averages show the range of options behind the missing defenseman. Harley has played 24:57 a night, Lindell 22:24, Lundkvist 17:41, Myers 16:16 and Bichsel 16:19. Gulutzan need not give every part of Heiskanen’s assignment to one player. He can consider how those existing workloads fit together, while keeping the demands of any additional minutes in view.
Harley provided the loudest offensive example in the Stars’ 4-3 win over San Jose on Nov. 7. He scored at 14:30 of the second period, and he was involved in all 3 of Dallas’ power-play goals, finishing with 1 goal and 2 assists. Dallas scored 4 times in the game: 3 on the power play and 1 at even strength.
That performance showed how the club can compensate in the short term, with a defenseman contributing and special teams carrying an unusually large share of the attack.
It would be a mistake to treat one excellent offensive night as a complete replacement plan. Harley’s work helped Dallas beat San Jose, but Heiskanen’s 11 points and 24:53 average represent an assignment extending beyond the power play. The club’s 2.29 goals allowed per game offers encouragement about the group.
Preserving that defensive performance is another requirement, alongside finding somebody to supply a missing goal or pass.
