Connor hoping to continue hot streak, aid Jets playoff push

They both remember exactly how it started.

It was Oct. 17, 2017, and Kyle Connor was called up to the Winnipeg Jets after starting the season with the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League after Mathieu Perreault landed on injured reserve. Connor had played in 20 games the season before, but never on the top line, never with Mark Scheifele.

But that day, then-Jets coach Paul Maurice mixed up his forwards during the game, shifting the young Connor up to the top line with Scheifele and Blake Wheeler, trying push the right buttons for his team. 

That's when it happened. 

"He made just a great cut to the net," Scheifele recalled recently. "I hit him for a shot in the slot, and I knew he had something then. And you're not sure what it is, but even me and 'Wheels' back in that day, we're like, 'This kid's going to be a player.'"

They weren't wrong. Since that goal, the third of his NHL career, Connor has scored 313 more, with 663 points (316 goals, 347 assists) in 684 career NHL games, including 81 points (32 goals, 49 assists) in 71 games this season. 

Many, many of those points have come with Scheifele by his side. 

"It's something that we're constantly working on, the chemistry, to try to be the best that we can be," Connor said. "We push each other. We read off their tendencies a lot and just certain areas they're going to, offensive zone reads that I think we've developed really well. … It's almost instinctual. It's great to see. And I think we're both just competitors and push each other and that's what's enabled us, too, to just keep getting better."

The two are the Jets' top two leading scorers -- with Scheifele's 86 points in 71 games one shy of an NHL career high -- but they'll be asked to do even more as the Jets try to remain in the race for the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a tough home-and-home series against the Colorado Avalanche, starting at Canada Life Centre on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; TSN3, ALT, KTVD). The Jets are five points back of the Nashville Predators for the second wild card in the Western Conference, with two teams in between.

Connor has played particularly well since returning from the Winter Olympics, where he was part of the gold medal-winning Team USA, playing in the first two preliminary games before being a healthy scratch for the remainder. He has 17 points (seven goals, 10 assists) in 15 games since the season resumed. 

"People are starting to recognize what a talent he is," Jets coach Scott Arniel said, citing his inclusion at the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Olympics. "He's got darting speed and change of direction speed, so he's very elusive for the opposition to track him down. The other thing for me is his shot release. He gets it off faster and quicker than a lot of guys in this League. I put him in the top 10 of goal scorers, pure goal scorers."

Over Connor's nine full seasons in the NHL, starting with that goal against the Blue Jackets, in fact, he sits seventh in the NHL in goals with 314, behind only Auston Matthews (388), Leon Draisaitl (384), Alex Ovechkin (365), David Pastrnak (360), Connor McDavid (355) and Nathan MacKinnon (338). It's elite company.

"It's one thing to be a playmaker," Arniel said. "It's another thing to be a shooter. But he's a type of guy that he gets in around anywhere inside that inner circle, inner area, the front of the net there, his release and his quickness, his ability to put it in spots where he's pre-scouted the goalie, he's really good at doing those things."

And he's even better with Scheifele by his side. 

"A lot of it is just instinctual," Scheifele said. "Just the way we read the game, but there's a lot of conversations behind closed doors, things we need to work on, things we need to focus on. He's such a brilliant hockey mind but also has the skill to match it.

"He's just been incredible to play with. I'm very lucky."

Watch the two of them and the connection is notable. Anywhere Connor needs Scheifele to be, there he is, and it's the same the other way around. They have a feel for, an understanding of what the other needs, where they'll be, what they're thinking. 

"I think if you go back in history, you look at every great goal scorer, playmaker … it's always a tandem," Arniel said. "It's [Mike] Bossy and [Bryan] Trottier. I'm aging myself. But there's [Jari] Kurri and [Wayne] Gretzky, and it goes on and on. And those two, that's what they do well.

"You can see just the recognition, or if one heads left the other one head right, or one cuts back, one moves forward. They have an ability to find each other and they play so much together, they practice so much together, that that chemistry is built."

Given how many of their points have come together, it's notable that both can instantly recall that first moment, that first connection. How they both knew, immediately, that something special was coming – both in their ability to work together and also in Connor, himself. 

"It just built from there," Connor said. "It's been incredible."