MATINKYLÄ, Finland — Ilmatar arena is cold.
Not just cold like any NHL ice rink, but frigid.
The building that houses twin rinks is so cold there’s snow built up in the corner. Stepping outside into the 40-degree weather feels like entering a Finnish sauna.
There’s nothing particularly eye-popping about this rink in the suburb near Helsinki, either. The walls are barren. It’s not very well-lit. There’s a handful of advertisements along the boards, but not enough to wrap all the way around. There’s just one table and two chairs on the upper level to sit and observe those skating.
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The outside looks like a warehouse with an unassuming black and white sign that reads “areena.” Even American visitors have no trouble with that translation.
The dual rinks are directly next to an expanded and newly renovated sheet of ice with a café and fancy gift shop. A photo of Dallas Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen is on the wall inside, next to another of Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby.
But when Heiskanen arrives at the facility 15 minutes from where he grew up in Espoo, he gravitates toward the more humble rink. He walks around like it’s his home, even more comfortably than he does in the Stars’ locker room. He smiles, reminisces and chats in Finnish with those alongside him, a contrast from the all-business demeanor he shows in Dallas.
“I come here often in the summers,” Heiskanen told The Dallas Morning News in an exclusive interview at the rink this week. “It’s good memories from here. It’s always nice to come back.”
Every time Heiskanen returns home to the Helsinki area — including this week for the NHL Global Series featuring the Stars and Florida Panthers — the rink in Matinkylä is one of his first and most frequent stops. It’s where he trains in the summers and where he hosts Finland’s largest youth camp in the offseason, attracting kids from all over the country who want to be just like him.
The Matinkylä ice rink isn’t a bad place for them to start. After all, it is where Heiskanen learned to play the game.
Related:How the Dallas Stars developed NHL’s strongest talent pipeline from Finland
“I think it’s great to continue practicing here, and it’s always fun to come back,” Heiskanen said. “The group I practice with, they like to train there. It’s close to home, so it works well for me.”
After learning to skate on an outdoor rink, Heiskanen first picked up a hockey stick when he was 4 at the hockey school in the rink he returned to Tuesday. He continued to go there for a decade for open skates and practices with his youth team, the Espoo Blues.
Hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours spent on that ice were the start of Heiskanen’s journey to becoming an elite skater — and one the best in the NHL. It’s where Heiskanen was discovered by his current agents Juha Ylönen and Mika Backman, who helped him develop into one of the top defensemen in the world.
“I knew he would be a good player, but he turned out to be a really, really good player,” Ylönen said.
Dallas Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen poses with his agents Mika Backman (left) and Juha Ylönen (right) at Matinkylä Ilmatar Arena.(Petri Saarelainen)Discovering a star
Ylönen frequented the rink in Matinkylä throughout Heiskanen’s childhood but was there to watch someone else.
His son was the same age, and they played together from a young age. Ylönen, who played seven seasons in the NHL from 1996-2002, also coached Heiskanen for a year as an early teen.
But even then, it was clear the future No. 3 NHL draft pick had incredible potential.
“In one year, you can see a lot, so I knew he was a really good hockey player,” Ylönen said. “Hockey was easy for him, and he really loved to play it.”
Young Finnish players can seek representation once they’re 15, and Ylönen knew he wanted to remain a part of Heiskanen’s journey. He and his partners Backman, a lawyer, and Mikko Lahtinen, who worked for a team in Finland’s top professional league SM-Liiga, had started an agency a decade earlier.
Weeks after Heiskanen turned 15, Ylönen brought Backman to the Matinkylä rink to watch him. The three reached a deal easily. A decade later, they still work together with support from agent Ian Pulver, who helps with contract matters in North America. Heiskanen is one of just two NHL clients they have alongside Utah’s Matias Maccelli.
“When I first saw Miro, he knew already when he got the puck what he’s going to do with it,” Backman said. “It looked so smooth and so easy.”
Those who scouted Heiskanen from the Stars organization were similarly impressed when he made his professional debut for HIFK just a few years later.
“The first thing that catches your eye is the skating,” said Kari Takko, Stars director of European scouting. “Once you see that skating, you start to dig in more and more at what he really has, hockey sense, skill. He was easy. He was easy scouting.”
Takko even had some hesitations about the other Finnish players on the Stars’ roster. While Esa Lindell’s hockey sense was top-notch, “[he] was like a Bambi on the slippery ice with his skating,” Takko said. While Roope Hintz was as fast at 17 as he is now, he lacked physicality that he didn’t develop until his AHL days.
But Heiskanen was a different story.
Takko typically watches a player in 8-10 games before deciding whether to contact them. With Heiskanen, he needed just three before he was sold.
No one who was part of Heiskanen’s development ever questioned if he was good enough. He was small, but that’s because he spent his entire career playing with players a year or two older.
The greater concern was whether the Stars could get him in the 2017 draft. After winning the lottery and moving up from eighth to third — their highest pick since the team moved to Dallas in 1993 — the Heiskanen dream became possible.
“You hope you’re not picking there because that means you’ve had a bad year, but when you do have an opportunity to pick there, they change the franchise, and that’s what Miro’s done,” Stars GM Jim Nill said. “He changed our franchise.”
Related:When in Finland: Stars getting acquainted with local culture during NHL Global Series trip
Dallas Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen poses at the Matinkylä Ilmatar Arena gift shop, where Stars merchandise is often the first to be purchased. (Petri Saarelainen)Becoming the best
At just 25, Heiskanen already has had a rather full career.
He’s in his seventh season in Dallas where he plays nearly 25 minutes a night as a top-pairing defenseman and power-play quarterback. Just two seasons ago, he set a franchise record for most points by a defenseman with 73. A few years before that, he became just the second rookie in franchise history to be selected for the NHL All-Star Game.
His early success landed him an eight-year, $67.6 million contract in 2021 that will keep him in Dallas through 2028-29.
“I was 19 when I got there and couldn’t even go to bars,” Heiskanen said. “It’s a little different now. Time is flying.”
For all Heiskanen has accomplished, it would be easy for him to have an ego. But he’s managed to maintain a shy and humble demeanor that his agents said he’s had since back in his days with the Espoo Blues.
“He’s always been like that,” Ylönen said. “He’s a really good teammate. That helps you a lot in the long run. If you are a star player, not everybody is like that.”
That selfless character trait is one reason Heiskanen became a defenseman in the first place. He started playing forward, as most young kids want to do, but his youth coaches told him he’d have to play defenseman. He said he didn’t care enough to object and learned to love the position.
That decision could lead to Heiskanen becoming Finland’s greatest defenseman ever. Among the great Finns to play in the NHL, most of the biggest names are forwards. Of the 38 active players, just eight are defensemen.
“Over the years there’s been great defensemen, but not that many,” said Stars legendary forward Jere Lehtinen, who is from the same hometown as Heiskanen. “It might be because we had more forwards that put up points and kids idolized them more. It’s tough. If you want to be a good, skilled defenseman, you have to be able to defend good, but he needs to be able to play and skate, too. The level nowadays to be great is just getting faster and faster.”
Related:Catching up with Stars great Jere Lehtinen ahead of Global Series trip to Finland
Teppo Numminen and Kimmo Timonen are regarded as two of the best from Finland, finishing with 637 and 571 points in over 1,000 games each. But Heiskanen already ranks 10th all-time in points by a Finnish defenseman with 261 in just 434 games. He’s poised to finish near or better than those top players.
The hockey community in Espoo and Helsinki knows this. Heiskanen’s rise is why Stars merch at the new Matinkylä ice rink gift shop is always the first NHL gear to go, the store’s salesmen said. It’s why his picture is on the wall and young players tell him every summer they want to grow up to be just like him.
“It’s been a lot of work to get to this point, and people appreciate what you are doing, so of course, it’s a great feeling to hear that,” Heiskanen said. “I really love that.”
Heiskanen has gotten used to the attention and has learned to appreciate it. But that hasn’t changed who he’s been from the start.
He still feels most himself in the old “areena” working on his skating and improving in the areas his team needs most, just as he did 10 and 20 years ago.
“I think the main thing is just be as good as I can be and help the team,” he said. “That’s kind of the way that I’m looking at it.”
More from the Stars in Finland
— When in Finland: Stars getting acquainted with local culture during NHL Global Series trip
— Stars’ Esa Lindell working to restore hometown club after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
— How the Dallas Stars developed NHL’s strongest talent pipeline from Finland
— Catching up with Stars great Jere Lehtinen ahead of Global Series trip to Finland
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Stars forward Roope Hintz releases signature Finland-inspired shoe to benefit childrenWhen in Finland: Stars getting acquainted with local culture during NHL Global Series trip
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