Before the 2022 NHL All-Star Skills Competition in Las Vegas earlier this season, St. Louis Blues forward Jordan Kyrou was asked about participating in the fastest skater event. Specifically, if the 23-year-old thought he could outpace Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid, who had won the competition three times.
“I’m gonna try,” Kyrou said, smiling.
He whipped around the rink in 13.55 seconds. Faster than McDavid. Faster than anyone else in the competition.
“Connor is definitely still the fastest player in the world,” Kyrou said after the event. “But you always have to believe in yourself a little bit, right?”
If there has been a big stage this season, Kyrou has been a show-stopper on it. On Jan. 1 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Kyrou set an NHL outdoor game record with four points in the Blues’ Winter Classic win over the Minnesota Wild. After winning the fastest skater crown, Kyrou scored five points in two 3-on-3 NHL All-Star games.
“I think it’s just your state of mind. Everyone is watching. You want to do your best out there,” Kyrou said.
The fact is that more people are watching Kyrou this season than ever before. In 58 games, he has 61 points: 22 goals and 39 assists. The Blues haven’t had a point-per-game player since the late Pavol Demitra in 2002-03 (1.19), and Kyrou (1.05) is primed to be the next.
In the process, he has helped make the Blues one of the highest-scoring teams in the league at 3.55 goals per game. Which is not exactly something one associates with the franchise: This would be the best offensive season by a Blues team since 1995-96, when Brett Hull was still firing pucks past goalies while wearing The Note.
Kyrou is their leading scorer.
“We need him to be that player if we’re going to have success,” GM Doug Armstrong told ESPN this week.
“There’s putting up numbers, and then there’s putting up numbers in a winning fashion, you know what I mean? We’ve been fortunate to have a team that’s been competing nightly to win for playoff positioning. It’s not just ‘point night,'” he said. “I think Jordan understands that’s more important than anyone’s personal statistics. It doesn’t matter how good your game is if you aren’t tapping the goalie’s pads after you’ve won.”
Kyrou started playing hockey in Mississauga, Ontario. He was selected by the Sarnia Sting with the 38th overall pick in the 2014 OHL Priority Selection draft.
Sarnia owner Derian Hatcher, the former NHL defenseman, said Kyrou was a talented but inconsistent player in juniors.
“He always showed flashes during the games. He just couldn’t put it together consistently. That was his biggest thing,” Hatcher told ESPN.
Hatcher was surprised when Kyrou wasn’t selected in the first round in the 2016 NHL draft, dropping to the second round where the Blues selected him 35th overall.
“We talked about it internally within the team. I think it was his lack of consistency. Even look now in the NHL: It took him a little while to figure things out,” Hatcher said.
What Armstrong liked then is what he likes now about Kyrou: His skating, his ability to make plays at a high speed and his multifaceted offensive skill set that allows him to score at a distance but also make great passes.
When the Blues selected Kyrou in the draft, Hatcher reached out to Armstrong to discuss Kyrou’s time in Sarnia and his virtues as a talent.
“I told him that [Kyrou] reminded me of Mike Modano,” said Hatcher, who played with the Hockey Hall of Famer on the Dallas Stars. “He can do things at full speed with the puck. He’s almost faster with the puck, just like Mike was faster with the puck than without it.”
Hatcher said the organization is proud of Kyrou’s blossoming into an NHL star this season.
“Jordan and I didn’t always get along great. But at the end of the day, we did. He was [in Sarnia] for four years, so it always feels good to have a player who spent his career there and played well in the NHL,” he said, adding that he was always confident that Kyrou would find his groove in the league.
“It’s tough to realize that when you play in the NHL, every day has to be the same. The work has to be there every day. That’s just the reality of it. A lot of these young men coming out [of junior] have a hard time figuring that out,” Hatcher said. “I always thought he would break through. I thought it might be a little bit quicker. But they took their time on him, and it paid off.”
Kyrou’s first pro season was 2018-19, and things were trending in the right direction for him to hit the Blues’ main roster. But a kneecap injury sidelined him at the end of that season, and the rehab from that injury carried over into the following season.
The Blues didn’t view Kyrou as a player who was going to be “a continual call-up” for a couple of years. When he’d make it, he’d make it for good and sustain his presence on the NHL level. So patience was the virtue.
“We just wanted to make sure that when he was ready to go in the NHL, that he had built that foundation. One of the things you guard against is putting players in the NHL without the foundation to sustain it,” Armstrong said.
His first full season was in 2020-21, when he scored 35 points in 55 games. His offensive breakout this season has coincided with the Blues’ becoming an overall better scoring team.
“I think a lot of guys have really stepped up this year. That makes our offense really deep. Our top three lines can be a first line on any team. All the boys stepped it up this year,” Kyrou said.
“I don’t want to sound self-centered about this, but we have three offensive lines when we’re healthy. On occasion, one line might get a matchup that it otherwise wouldn’t have gotten without those other offensive lines. So depth has helped him,” Armstrong said.
But Armstrong and the Blues wanted something more from Kyrou than just stats. They wanted to see growth as a competitor, or “winning habits” as the general manager put it. When to make a line change. What to do with the puck late in a close game.
“I think what you’re starting to see is his situational play is getting a little bit better,” defenseman Justin Faulk said earlier this season, via the St. Louis Dispatch. “He’s starting to know when to try those things, when the right opportunity is and isn’t.”
It’s all part of the learning process for young players. Robert Thomas, the 22-year-old forward who has been Kyrou’s frequent linemate this season, went through it, too.
There was a time when Kyrou or Thomas playing well and hitting the score sheet was considered a bonus by the Blues. Those days are over.
“For us to win, they have to be those guys. That’s a lot of responsibility to carry, but they’ve shown they can do it. I’ve let both of them know that they’re in that group now. We go as far as you take us,” Armstrong said. “They’re going to get the accolades. But when things don’t go well, they’re in that group that’s going to have to explain why.”
Kyrou has earned that responsibility in the Blues’ lineup. Not just for the numbers he’s putting up, but for the respect he has garnered from the team’s veteran core and coach Craig Berube.
“I give him a lot of credit. I don’t want to say that it was ‘tough love,’ but on a veteran team, he had to earn the trust of his coach and earn the trust of his teammates,” Armstrong said.
“The best teacher in anything is experience. This is his first time going through a playoff push as a counted-on guy. He understands that with the level of play that he has now, there’s a responsibility to be a great player every night.”
Kyrou has met the challenge, whether it’s on big stages like the NHL All-Star Game or the Winter Classic, or during a regular-season victory that has the Blues contending in the West.
St. Louis had to wait a bit for it to happen, both mentally and physically, but Jordan Kyrou has finally arrived.
“You want to get in the league, you want to stay in the league and then you want to have an impact in the league,” Armstrong said. “The first two boxes, he can check. Now he’s working toward making impact in the league and being a consistent performer. And I think he’s doing a hell of a job.”