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Star Lone State Of Mind - Mar. 20 2026 - Vol. 79 Issue 9 - Jared Clinton

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME – THE SUPPOSED phenomenon in which hostages form a bond with their captors – has had its share of representation in the media. It’s been shown in film and on television and has been the subject of novels and news reports.

As it turns out, though, the whole thing is hokum.

Before anyone gets their back up, rest assured, this is not our attempt to play armchair psychologist. There is, indeed, terminology for the intense bonds formed in such traumatic situations. But Stockholm Syndrome, specifically, is a ginned-up diagnosis. Coined by psychiatrist Nils Bejerot in the 1970s following an infamous attempted bank heist, and originally known as Norrmalmstorgssyndromet in his native Swedish, the purported condition does not and has not at any point appeared in the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. It is, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than a colloquialism.

Now, Texas Syndrome? That, on the other hand, is a very real affliction. The telltale signs are a twang in the speech and a two-step in the stride. It is a malady affecting the hearts, minds and, most distressingly, the playlists of an entire generation. And a perfect test case resides right in the heart of the Lone Star State: Finnish defenseman Miro Heiskanen.

Consider that there was a time when Heiskanen didn’t know his bluegrass from his honky-tonk. He couldn’t separate Dollywood from Graceland. He most certainly hadn’t heard of so-called bro-country. Then, eight years ago, Heiskanen pulled up stakes and set out for Dallas. And that’s when it happened: after avoiding infection for most of his young life, Heiskanen got bitten by the country-music bug. “I didn’t like it a lot when I got here,” he said. “But when you hear it every day, you kind of start liking it. I’m listening to it in the car, driving to the rink, stuff like that. It’s good.”

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(DAVID KIROUAC-IMAGN IMAGES)

Naturally, we jest. Heiskanen’s listening habits aren’t some sort of shock or horror. And to be sure, more than just his music tastes have changed over the course of the past eight years. He’s spent nearly his entire adulthood in Dallas. He’s not the fresh-faced 19-year-old any longer. Now 26, Heiskanen has fashioned his life in Texas. He and longtime partner, Julia, tied the knot last summer at a scenic wedding in Rome, and the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter, in February 2024.

For as much as has changed off the ice, though, surprisingly little is different about the Heiskanen we see on it. In many ways, he’s the same rearguard who touched down in Texas in 2018. Even by his own estimation, he’s simply a more refined version of the player he’s always been. He’s older, wiser and filled out physically, maybe, but still steady, stoic and unassuming – all of which makes it strange that perhaps the only marked change about Heiskanen is the chatter that surrounds him.

When he first arrived, his combination of defensive poise and offensive precision drew comparisons to no less than Hall of Famer and seven-time Norris Trophy winner Nicklas Lidstrom. And if the hype was rolling then, it reached a fever pitch during the 2020 post-season after Heiskanen’s six-goal, 26-point, nearly 26-minute-per-night performance helped propel the Stars to the Stanley Cup final. At the time, it was the fourth-most points registered in a single playoff by a defenseman (it’s now sixth). Exiting that post-season, the question was less if than when Heiskanen would add a Norris to his trophy cabinet.

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If Heiskanen can produce as he did in the 2020 playoffs, Dallas will be a tough out this year.

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ESA LINDELL, MIRO HEISKANEN, COLIN BLACKWELL & NATHAN BASTIAN

It makes you hungrier. It makes you realize how hard it is to get there– MIRO HEISKANEN ON THE RECENT PLAYOFF LOSSES

But those prognostications of personal hardware have yet to be fulfilled. Only once has he finished higher than 10th in Norris voting. That’s not for a lack of output, either. Since 2018-19, Heiskanen is the 15th-highest-scoring defenseman and sits 12th in power-play points. When it comes to utility, too, Heiskanen is a unicorn. This season, he is the only player to average more than 19 minutes at even strength and three minutes on both the power play and penalty kill.

Yet Heiskanen doesn’t factor into the vast majority of pre-season Norris conversations. Part of that, no doubt, is a changing landscape. The likes of Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes have reshaped the expectation of a modern defenseman, and offensive output has become (perhaps overly) paramount in the Norris discourse.

So has that made Heiskanen underrated? For his part, he’s not concerned with that noise. Nor, frankly, is he too fussed about the lack of a Norris to his name. “It’s something that would, of course, be nice to win, but it’s not something I really think about,” Heiskanen said. “I just try to help my team. My biggest goal is to win the Stanley Cup, so that’s the main focus.”

In that, Heiskanen is hardly alone, though one can understand why his desire for a Cup might burn that much deeper.

When the Stars reached the final during the bubble playoffs in 2020, Heiskanen hoped, maybe even believed, they would get back in short order. Instead, it’s beginning to feel like a distant memory. “It makes you hungrier,” he said. “It makes you realize how hard it is to get there. There are so many good teams and so many tough games to play before you get to the final, so it makes you hungrier, for sure.”

What has no doubt done little to sate Heiskanen’s appetite for a return to the final – and arguably made him yearn more for another shot at hoisting 34-odd pounds of shiny silver glory – is how excruciatingly close Dallas has been to booking its trip back. In 2023, the Stars took the eventual Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights to six games in the West final. Then came losses in six and five games to Edmonton in the past two conference finals.

It’s beenclose for a few years right now, so we know what it takes to get to the final– MIRO HEISKANEN

Heiskanen sees something different when he looks around the Stars’ room this season, though. There’s a relentlessness, he said, and a mindset that whatever stands between Dallas and victory is not insurmountable. That’s been evident in the team’s ability to come from behind, as Dallas entered March with the West’s best points percentage when trailing after two periods. “We’ve got a really deep lineup,” Heiskanen said. “We can put whoever on the ice, anyone on the roster, and everybody can score, and everybody can play defense. And we’ve just been more physical this year. That has been a little issue the past few years, that physicality part.”

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DALLAS TO MILAN

Heiskanen was also a key cog for Team Finland at the Olympics.

There was also a concerted effort by management to bolster the lineup, which has injected more belief into the dressing room. Adding Tyler Myers to the back end shored up the second pairing, while Michael Bunting was brought in for additional sandpaper and scoring depth up front. The message those moves sent to Heiskanen and the rest of the Stars roster is that everyone from the brass on down is all in.

And to Heiskanen, that’s all that matters.

As nice as the Norris would be, and as much as he might appreciate the league-wide recognition, none of that has ever been his concern. After one trip to the final and the pain of three consecutive third-round exits, his only interest – aside from his apparently burgeoning love of country music – is erasing the memory of those defeats. “It’s been close for a few years right now, so we know what it takes to get to the final, and it’s a long road,” Heiskanen said. “We have to be at our best every night. But at the same time, we have lost three in a row. So we have the mindset that you don’t want to experience that again.”