Rookie Kyle Connor to make playoff debut after stellar season with Jets
WINNIPEG — Kyle Connor has been skating on a rink in front of fans since the Winnipeg Jets forward was three years old.
But the ice wasn’t real back then, and neither were the fans.
Connor’s father had painted ice on the basement floor of their New Baltimore, Mich., home, adding more brush strokes to create a wall mural of boards and fans. Kyle would slip on a pair of Rollerblades and zip around.
“He’d just go down there all day long and just shoot pucks and skate around and stick handle. It was funny,” Joe Connor said in a recent phone interview. “And then I branched him over to ice hockey.”