How an 11-7 plan could look for the Stars when Miro Heiskanen does make his series debut

Let's talk about some of the specifics of a plan and what I would do.

Miro Heiskanen isn’t going to play Game 5 tonight for the Dallas Stars.

He’s closer according to Stars head coach Pete DeBoer, Heiskanen has also been labeled as “day-to-day” for close to a week now.

And with the series tied at 2-2, Heiskanen’s earliest return after injuring his knee on Jan. 28 and having knee surgery on Feb. 4 would be Game 6 on Thursday in Denver.

Before we get into some deeper thoughts on this, we have to go through some of the facts and realities.

• We know it was a knee injury, but we don’t know specifically what type of knee injury it was — the Stars have never given that up.

• It has been 83 days since Heiskanen had the surgery on his knee. For the typical human being, not a professional athlete, even thinking about this level of activity would probably be ill-advised.

• Heiskanen has been skating and pushing things in practice, but he has yet to take full contact. Realistically speaking, there is no way for the Stars to really give him game-type full-contact in practice or morning skate.

• Heiskanen traveling with the team doesn’t mean much of anything to return to play. He’s an assistant captain for the Stars, they want him around the group, him traveling with the team for Games 3 and 4 simply indicates travel won’t hurt his status and he no longer needs to remain in Dallas for treatments — like Jason Robertson.

• Knees are tricky things, the only true knowledge of what’s happening inside Heiskanen’s knee lies, well, within the knee itself.

That’s a list of things we sort of know, but nothing definitive enough for us to judge the Stars decision one way or the other.

And when the Stars make that decision on Heiskanen’s return, there are a couple key things they have to consider.