It was silly to watch all that Heiskanen hype during playoffs because that got many fans and journalists exposed. Heiskanen played like he normally does, but his teammates suddenly learned how to score and he got lot of points. Now all of a sudden Heiskanen is the man, just because of some secondary assists and couple goals.
Why should we watch games? Let's just open nhl.com and stats center and then decide who is the best dman based on PPG. Mystically Dahlin's PPG is way lower now because Eichel&co can't score. MacKinnon and Rantanen will always score, so Makar will always put up points no matter what (he's a great d-man, nothing away from him)
I’ve never personally watched much of heiskanen or rated him at all, and I’m not specifically trying to argue “against” your idea of him, but I think it’s worth pointing out secondary assists are important to defensman/centers. while some secondary assists could be basic passes that seem like free points, that also can be said about as much by primary assists.
Like, we’ve seen teams with great forwards who weren’t scoring as much because they had no puck moving defensman.
*You can have great defensman not score nearly as many points because they’ve not got forwards who can score (like the Stars last season and before)... but secondary assists absolutely matter as much as primary, ESPECIALLY for defensman. The % of his points being secondary isn’t a knock at all. Different D play different styles like forwards.
The primary assist on a goal and be pretty straight forward and nothing special a lot too, but often they only had the puck in the first place because their defender was good enough to individually get the puck back and either thread a pass through a forechecker or two, or he’s smart reading the game was able to skate briefly to open his own pass lane to a forward more or less just up waiting for a pass. There’s also a lot of defensmen (most) who often make basic breakout moves when they could have made better set up into the neutral zone.
A defensman who aids transition, is good defensively AND offensively, in today’s transition focused game is arguably disproportionately effective compared to the average skater any given game, similar to the goalie. He doesn’t have to be a prime Karlsson jumping way up into the play constantly, or Burns firing constant bombs; whatever he does, he did it super well in the playoffs
smart pinching, positioning and defense make offense as well etc.
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heiskanen’s hype was very defendable, and we saw real Heiskanen who was objectively great; albeit possibly just seeing his potential rather than “he’s a one man team like Prime Karlsson” suddenly and from now on.
***Keep in mind the context of him being basically still a kid at 21. I believe he was 20 in the playoffs; was 19 and 20 his two full seasons.. players don’t all slowly evenly progressively improve month to month. Sometimes they do, sometimes they explode and in either case they sometimes regress a while (it’s also early season)
Tl;dr
a team that because talent and or system can’t score will lower such a defensmans points, and the Stars have been pretty eh.
That some of them, of course pavelski, all suddenly turned it on and Heiskanen got a ton of points, while as you said *played basically the same as the regular season tells me we’re watching a great, smart defender on a inconsistent offensive team
(didn’t realize how much I had written since I can’t see 90% of the post on my phone screen haha)