Miro Heiskanen is good at hockey. Of course he is. He’s a star defenseman. But when star players don’t show up in the playoffs, your team is in trouble, and that’s exactly what happened to the Stars in the WCF this year. It would be easy enough to run through stats. Heiskanen’s 42% xG rate was the worst among the Dallas defensemen who played all 6 games of that series, as was his -7 goal difference rating. His offensive output left much to be desired, as he followed up an elite 73 point regular season with just 6 in 13 games across the series vs Seattle and Vegas. Despite all of this, it sure seems that Ryan Suter has absorbed the brunt of blame from fans. So here’s a video breakdown of Heiskanen against Vegas, showing exactly where things went wrong for him.

Here, Heiskanen has his ankles thoroughly broken by Jack Eichel, and then miscommunicates with Wyatt Johnson on what should have been a clearance. Jake Oettinger handled the situation well, but going by xG, this sequence was Vegas’ most dangerous chance of Game 1 that didn’t end up as a goal. After icing the puck, the very next play is a long offensive zone cycle leading to a Knights goal. Heiskanen isn’t particularly at fault for this one, but he certainly didn’t have any impact on disrupting the Knights’ puck movement.

Later in Game 1, Heiskanen once again gets beat. This all starts because 4th line grinder Keegan Kolesar is able to skate around and cut underneath Heiskanen. Miro has one job here: keep Kolesar to the outside. Kolesar is easily able to navigate around Dallas’ #1 defenseman and glide directly into the crease, a direct cause and effect leading to another Golden Knights goal.

Heiskanen’s tough Game 1 is capped off with another goal that is, if not his fault, perhaps his responsibility to stop. Heiskanen isn’t covering any Knight in particular on this play, and while Brett Howden’s nifty stickhandling behind the net deserves a ton of credit, ideally you’re paying someone like Heiskanen as much money as he earns to have the awareness, the positioning, the active stick to disrupt this play. So could this get even worse? It absolutely could!

On the first possession of Game 3, Heiskanen once again gets beat behind the boards, and spends the next few moments aimlessly floating while Vegas works the puck around. He’s late to cover Ivan Barbashev in the corner, letting him find Jack Eichel too easily.

Game 4: Dallas survives the sweep threat in an overtime thriller, but I want to focus in on the second Vegas goal in this game. This sequence is a comedy of errors from Heiskanen. The initial breakaway starts, as so many Vegas chances did in this series, with a Heiskanen floundering about and failing to do anything with a stick poke. For his second act, Heiskanen once again refuses to actually play up against the boards, and what should have been a Vegas turnover turns into a successful low-high cycle. Heiskanen is late to rotate over to a wide open Shea Theodore, who is able to toss a tough shot at Oettinger. Heiskanen is unable to stop Brayden McNabb of all players from receiving a pass below the dots, or from tossing a dime to Marchessault on the bumper. McNabb is not Heiskanen’s guy to defend, of course, and the blame can be spread around everyone in a green jersey on this play. But once again, Heiskanen is totally powerless to stop Vegas’ magical passing displays, and for some reason this wasn’t really an issue when Esa Lindell or Thomas Harley were defending instead.

Game 5. Eichel is skating up ice directly at Heiskanen, with Wyatt Johnston hot on his heels. Despite having 2 defenders on Eichel, Dallas cannot recover the puck – it gets tossed out into open ice for Ivan Barbashev to snatch up. Heiskanen successfully stops Eichel here, I suppose, but the end result is a Vegas goal where Heiskanen is completely behind the play. Where is his recovery? Shouldn’t he be aware of Barbashev coming in and try to close down space?

Second period. Heiskanen finds the puck on his skate, and then on his stick. He softly tosses it into the corner, easily recovered by Vegas, for one of his most costly turnovers of the series. The Knights pass it around the perimeter efficiently. Heiskanen leaves Chandler Stephenson open, and doesn’t do nearly enough to get in front of the shot. Dallas ended up winning Game 5, but Miro Heiskanen was heavily at fault for both goals against in this one.

Game 6 is a massacre. Vegas takes it 6-0 on Dallas’ home ice. Heiskanen is out there for 3 of the goals against. None of these are truly on him: a 2 on 1 where ideally he stops the pass from William Carrier, an ugly Joel Hanley turnover where Heiskanen probably would’ve been better off covering Will Karlsson joining the play from behind. Ideally these defensive deficiencies are masked by offensive production, but outside of powerplay quarterbacking, Heiskanen recorded just 1 point against the Golden Knights. Dallas will surely make some changes on the blue line heading in to next year, but none of that will matter if Miro Heiskanen doesn’t look like himself in the clutch moments.