Trey Taylor played 9:59. Thomas Harley played 28:31. Those two numbers sit at opposite ends of Dallas’ defensive plan in Thursday’s 2-1 shootout loss at Columbus, and they offer a better reading of Taylor’s night than the absence of a point or shot.
Miro Heiskanen missed the game with an upper-body injury sustained Tuesday at Washington. The Stars responded by placing the heaviest work on established defensemen while giving Taylor a narrow assignment in his second NHL appearance.
The box score does not explain why every minute was allocated, but it does show that Dallas did not ask a 24-year-old playing his second game to absorb Heiskanen’s role by himself.
That was the sensible choice. Taylor, a Clarkson product who signed with Dallas in 2025, had played 10:44 in his NHL debut against Montreal the previous Thursday. Against Columbus, he finished with one blocked shot, one hit and one giveaway. He did not record a shot or a point. That is a small sample and a quiet line, not a failed audition.
The night’s shape made a larger trial especially unnecessary. Columbus managed 30 shots, while Casey DeSmith stopped 29 across 65:00. Dallas allowed no goals through two periods, then took a 1-0 lead when Mikko Rantanen scored 6:27 into that period.
Wyatt Johnston’s shot followed an Ivan Provorov turnover, and Rantanen collected the rebound near the net before finishing. That play gave Dallas a lead without requiring Taylor to become the emergency centerpiece of the defense.
The result still belongs in the evaluation: Columbus tied the game and won the shootout after a scoreless overtime. Dallas earned one standings point. Taylor’s small assignment did not produce a goal at either end in his plus-minus line, and one block is too little to establish a pattern. It is enough to describe the size of the first job he completed in this game.
The workload around him tells a more grounded story. Lindell played 26:05 and recorded five shots plus three blocked shots. Harley had five shots and three blocks over his 28:31.
Tyler Myers logged 19:50 and blocked five shots, while Nils Lundkvist reached a season-high 21:06. Lian Bichsel played 18:06. Taylor was part of the six-man group, but he was not assigned the difficult volume carried by the veterans and Harley.
That is also why the idea of Taylor replacing Heiskanen alone deserves to be discarded. An injured top defenseman does not create one empty container labeled “minutes” for the next player to fill. Dallas spread the burden across its defense, allowed DeSmith to handle the shots that reached the net and got through regulation without a defensive collapse.
The Stars still gave up too many chances for comfort, but the evening never required a desperate experiment.
Taylor’s quiet contribution should be judged at the proper scale. One block, one hit and one giveaway over 9:59 can describe a player who completed a controlled shift load; they cannot establish that he is ready for a much longer assignment. Nor can the absence of offensive production establish the opposite.
