“It’s eye opening,” said Colorado Avalanche forward Parker Kelly. “I feel like I’m always pretty receptive to tough conversations… but there’s some that for sure need to happen, and that one kind of changed my trajectory in the NHL.”

Through 50 games this season, Parker Kelly is putting together the most productive stretch of his NHL career. He’s recorded 10 goals and 19 points, already establishing a career high in goals and matching his previous best in points — with room to push past it down the stretch.

Kelly has added three goals and three assists over his last 10 games, while continuing to handle a heavy defensive workload. He ranks among the top 50 NHL forwards in hits and blocks while averaging 12:16 of ice time per game, and leads all Avs forwards in penalty-kill minutes at 113:58.

Offensively, he’s generating more chances than ever, posting the highest shooting percentage (15.4%) and shot rate of his career… but before he was thriving in Colorado, he had to confront a crossroads in his career.

Following his second full season with the Ottawa Senators, after coming up through the organization, former head coach DJ Smith called him in for a meeting.

In 55 games, Kelly had just one goal and three assists after an injury sidelined him for the back half of the 2022-23 season.

“I (was) playing good defense, playing on the kill,” Kelly explained, “but I had a good meeting with the coaches after that year, and they (said), ‘To be honest you need to find a way to produce — scoring one goal a year (is) not going to help you last long in the league.’ That was a really honest statement for me to hear.”

He was grateful to have another year on his contract and put up eight goals and ten assists the next season. Really taking that conversation to heart, he has especially worked on his offense every summer since.

“I’ve just tried to work on my hands, work on getting to the net, just try to hang onto the puck a bit more instead of …  I’m always going to dump it in and go forecheck, but maybe there’s times like this year I’m finding myself skating it in, delaying a bit more. Just trying to make more plays instead of always dump-in, forecheck, dump-in, forecheck,” he said.

It’s not surprising that he was so receptive to such a difficult conversation.

“Parker’s a true pro,” said Jared Bednar. “Everything he does is for the team. He’s an unselfish guy and he understands that we’ve had a lot of turmoil in the bottom-six, especially recently. He wants to make an impact in the game, and so he’s helping those guys. He’s a great leader that way… He’s just trying to make the biggest impact on the game as he can, and he’s done that both on the defensive side of it and offensively he’s chipping in as well.”

It’s important to consider the context of the season alongside his success. In a revolving door bottom-six missing penalty kill specialist Logan O’Connor, with injuries to Joel Kiviranta and Gavin Brindley at times, and a need for center depth — he’s been asked to play down the middle and on the wing on both the third and fourth line.

And yet, he’s found a way to perfect the art of slipping to the interior of the ice and scoring goals. It follows something of a formula that involves hard work on the forecheck to force guys off pucks, and ends with perfect placement inside his shooter’s lane to the net for a redirect — or a hard-fought rebound after asserting himself at the crease.

“I watched (Artturi Lehkonen) and he’s an absolute warrior in front of the net and so good at tipping pucks and getting into the blue paint and finding a way to bang one in,” he revealed. “I’m not a guy who’s probably going to rip one-timers from the perimeter, so I’m going to try to get to the net. I think it’s also the D even getting their shots through and a little bit of deflection is a little bit of luck as well, I would say. But definitely about putting yourself in the right spot… With the way our offensive zone kind of system works, with the great d-men we have, as long as you get to the net, they’re probably going to get it through.”

It’s also a matter of good decisions. Does he get inside his guy to act as a screen or take the middle to make himself an option? “It’s kind of a gamble either way,” Kelly explained. “If he’s really taking the inside, I’m just going to go to the middle and I feel like honestly, getting to the middle and just backing into him and then just keeping your stick neutral allows you to tip kind of both sides. That’s something I’ve worked on.”

Once he’s at the net, it’s a battle to stay there. “I also used to fall down a lot,” he laughed. “But when I’m going to the net, I’m more leaning on my stick. The d-man’s always going to give you a little bit of cross-check, so before… he’d cross-check me and then I’d fall, where now I’m using my stick as balance and just still kind of backing into him. So staying on my feet’s been a big difference, I think. And then I’d say there’s times where working in front of the d-man, I always used to love getting behind him. Working in front of the d-man allows you to tip the puck, so I’ve been trying to do a little bit more of that and it seems to be working.”

His uptick in scoring is a result of a combination of things including advice from teammates like Nathan MacKinnon, building chemistry with his linemates, and video work with the coaching staff.

“Just learning from guys here — Nate’s given me lots of great offensive zone advice, same with Cale (Makar) and (Brock Nelson). All those guys are so offensive minded that they’ve done a really good job. If they see something that they think I could change or give me a little advice here and there, they’re always open and give me good advice.”

Building chemistry can be challenging when your linemates often change, but Kelly is versatile.

“No matter who I’m playing with… I’m not going to change my game, so it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “Maybe center to wing is a little bit different — you kind of got to make different reads and stuff like that — but I feel like now it’s part of the job. You come in and there’s going to be guys bouncing out with injuries and whatnot. So, I’m ready to go for whoever it is.”

He admitted that it’s a little bit easier if he can play with the same players for 10-15 game stretches.

“You would start to see tendencies — playing with (Brindley) for example, he’s so good at coming down the ice,” Kelly started. “I know he’s going to be able to delay, so I can just start feeding under. (Whereas) playing with a new guy I might not know, so I might go help and then maybe he rims it, and I’m late. Just things like that. So, trying to read what certain guys’ tendencies are, I feel like is a big part of trying to build chemistry and then you’ll feel it out. Playing with Jack (Drury), I played with Jack a lot, he’s going to be supporting me all over the ice. He’s always going to be in the right spot and he talks to me.”

Communicating with each other has been one of the most effective ways to build chemistry.

“I try to talk a lot, to be honest,” he said. “There are certain times where you’re thinking the play over in your head and maybe you get the iPad out and ask, ‘Hey, what do we see here?’ But I think talking on the bench, on the ice, is just the best way to eliminate any confusion. Jack, when he’s talking on the ice, it makes my job ten times easier than if I don’t hear anything…. Because I’m a guy, I got my head down, grinding. I can’t see, I don’t shoulder check as much as I should, so when guys are talking to me, it helps me a lot. Even a guy like (Zakhar Bardakov) or Taylor (Makar), they come up and it’s a little quiet, so I’m trying to talk to them to almost break the ice so that they can talk as well.”

“He’s talking to them pre-game, after the pre-scout meeting, during the game, on the bench, because he wants his line to have success and the best way to do that is to elevate the two guys around him regardless of how much experience they have,” Bednar corroborated. “I love that from him.”

“You can definitely tell guys who have been in the league longer, they’re crisp at yelling,” Kelly added. “Before you even get the puck, they’re yelling at you so you know what to do with the puck. So I’m just trying to do that for my linemates and try to be really vocal out there.”

Finally, Kelly shouted out assistant coach Dave Hakstol’s impact as well as skills coach Mark Popovic.

“The way it kind of works is: if I don’t like my game, like if I didn’t like my routes, I didn’t like what I did with the puck, I’ll go to (Hakstol),” he explained. “‘Hey, do you mind just getting some clips for me? I’m kind of thinking these are the areas I didn’t really like. Do you want to try to find some of those?’”

Hakstol will prepare video for him to review the next day. “He’ll show maybe some things, maybe it wasn’t even as bad as I thought. And sometimes, the way you’re playing the game, the puck just wasn’t going your way and you’re in the right spots, but it just wasn’t clicking,” he elaborated. “So he’ll be really reassuring, ‘Hey, it wasn’t all that bad,’ because we’re our own hardest critics.”

Coupling positive reinforcement with critical feedback goes a long way.

“Let’s say I didn’t really like my game — he’ll call the whole line in and then he’ll talk to me, (Brindley), and (Bardakov), ‘Hey, this is not right. This is what we need to look like.’ Then he’ll show a couple of good clips of what we did and (say), ‘This is what needs to happen on a consistent basis.’”

Hakstol is the guy players can turn to for systems work and Popovic comes in to highlight individual wins.

“(Popovic) likes to show a lot of the skill and great plays you’ve done just to build your confidence. So, just watching a few of those clips with Pop and a little highlight tape of yourself is going to make you feel a bit better about yourself,” he admitted. “He does a really good job of being like, ‘Hey, this is a play. Instead of dumping it in, trust yourself… Skate, skate, skate, delay. Look for the next wave coming in,’ … A lot of guys have been watching video with him and benefiting as well.”

“Pop’s showing me like if I ever toe drag someone, he’d (say), ‘Look at this, look at this play. Like, that’s unbelievable.’”

The Avs solidly hold the number one spot in the league with a 35-6-9 record and 79-points. A difficult stretch over their last homestand, going 3-2-2, left a bitter taste and they’re looking to get back on track. Kelly’s depth scoring contributions have been a huge boost. He’s an important part of the team’s success — their top-three penalty kill in particular.

His four-year contract extension signed this summer demonstrates the trust he’s earned on a team with Stanley Cup ambitions. He’s come a long way from that difficult conversation a couple summers ago.

“DJ Smith was great for me in Ottawa and I owe him a lot,” he said. “He gave me my first opportunity in the NHL. He believed in me and he always gave me honest feedback… That was something that really clicked in my head for me and was an honest, hard conversation that I needed to hear,” he reflected. “Honestly, maybe if I don’t hear that conversation, who knows what happens?”