Ehlers aims to improve every aspect of his game

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This article was published 27/09/2021 (1446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NIKOLAJ Ehlers has established a lengthy list of things he’d like to sharpen up about his game during the fast-approaching seventh season of his NHL career.

His coach maintains more of the same would be fine and dandy.

“I’d like him to start where he finished. If he has the same year he had last year — everyone wants more, I get that — if he has the same year he had last year, then he’s going to have a hell of a year,” Paul Maurice told reporters, following another training camp session at the Iceplex. “So, he starts there. If he can add to that, great. We think he can. It’s not even so much if you score five more or five less, you can still have a better year. I just want him to start there.”

The swift-skating Dane supplied 21 goals and 46 points in 47 games and was a team-high plus-15. He also played fewer minutes (16:55) per night than Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, Kyle Connor, Paul Stastny and Andrew Copp.

He’s had five consecutive 20-goal seasons, while eclipsing the 25 mark three times.

Ehlers can be a human highlight reel, dodging traffic, gaining the offensive zone and generating scoring chances, and is in a class by himself when it comes to elevating fans from their seats. But an abundance of room exists for improvement, he said.

“Everything,” he said, when asked to specify his plans for improvement during the 2021-22 campaign.

Even his world-class speed?

“Everything.”

One of the league’s human laser beams worked on his explosiveness to boost his overall quickness.

“It’s all during the summer in the gym. You do sprints, you do all kinds of things like jumps, weighted jumps, everything to kind of build on that first few steps to get going. And I think that’s where I’ve been the slowest,” he said. “I think I’m fine — I’m fast — when I get going. But I’ve always wanted to get faster off the first three steps. I think that’s what I’ve been working on a lot this summer as well.”

That’s dynamite news for a squad that relies mightily on his ability to drive play. His commitment to defensive maintenance has not gone unnoticed, either.

“He was more of an inspiration to our team a lot of nights than not. He became a driver. Some of his back checking and some of his defensive plays he made, and the intensity he played on the puck, was very inspiring. If your smallest guy is playing that hard, it really gets the bench wired up,” said Maurice. “If he’s going to score 40 we’ll take it.”

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The consensus among some veteran players is their heads got in the way of their early development in the NHL.

Jansen Harkins will be 25 next May and already has four years of pro hockey on his resume, including 29 games with Winnipeg in 2019-20 and 26 during the truncated 2021 campaign.

Harkins, battling for a job on the Jets’ bottom-six forward group, acknowledged he still has a tendency to dissect situations instead of performing on instinct.

“For sure, over-thinking the game is something you can do pretty easily when you’re first coming up. When the speed gets up, you don’t want to hesitate. That’s something the coaches have worked on with me and a lot of the other guys, just making your read and dealing with whatever happens after that,” said Harkins, a second-round pick in 2017. “I think that’s a goal for me this preseason, too, especially with this pace, just being aggressive and not being afraid to make mistakes and just being fast, fast decisions and cleaning things up from there.”

A consistent point producer in four seasons with the Prince George Cougars of the Western Hockey League, Harkins has placed a higher emphasis on maturing his defensive game to earn more ice time.

He’s also a top candidate for penalty-kill work, as holes exist with the departures of Mason Appleton, Nate Thomson and Trevor Lewis.

“You want to be able to chip in on special teams, for sure, especially if you’re trying to be a steady guy in the lineup. You have to bring something else to your game other than just 5-on-5. For me, it’s trying to learn as much as I can during this camp in the short time we’re working on it, and prove on the PK I can get the job done,” said Harkins, who set up Pierre-Luc Dubois for a power-play goal Sunday night with Ottawa two men short. “The power play is kind of a little dessert for me.”

“Ever since I came up, I just try to be available, really. If it’s left (wing), centre or right, I just want to contribute the best I can. That’s rounding out my game, that’s something where you have to be able to play both sides at this level if you want to get some looks. So, just trying to bring that into my training camp, show I can do a bit of both and see what happens.”

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Dubois won’t be grinning from ear to ear for the next while, and it’s no reflection on his level of contentment at Jets training camp.

The 6-3, 220-pound centre got a mouthful of stitches to close a gash after getting cross-checked in the face by Ottawa rookie Ridly Greig midway through the second period of the Jets-Senators pre-season contest Monday in downtown Winnipeg.

Greig was assessed a major penalty and game-misconduct, and a day later was suspended for one pre-season game and one regular-season game, without pay, by the NHL’s department of player safety.

The former Brandon Wheat Kings forward will forfeit $4,470.83. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

Views of the play, both live and on rewind, appeared to show no intent to injury on the play, a point Dubois — in obvious discomfort — made after the game.

“I don’t think he did it on purpose. I don’t really know him. But I know he’s a good player, scored a nice goal in the first (period),” he said. “I think he just got scared, threw his stick up. He saw me coming and threw his stick up to defend himself, which is obviously against the rules for an obvious reason. It is what it is.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell