Patrick King

An injury-plagued season prevented Brett Connolly from being mentioned alongside Hall & Seguin.

Time is running out for Brett Connolly to leave an impression on National Hockey League scouts.

One of the headliners in this year's deep draft class, Connolly has been unable to prove himself on the ice this year after being limited to just 16 games. The Prince George Cougars forward suffered from recurring hip problems that began in August while representing Canada at the Under-18 Memorial of Ivan Hlinka tournament.

Connolly is now back in a Team Canada uniform at the Under-18 World Championship and looking to regain his status as a lottery pick for this summer's draft.

"I haven't played much this year and I'm looking at this as a second opportunity to prove myself," Connolly said prior to the team's flight on Tuesday. "I'm going to go there and I'm going to play hard and do all the little things right and do the best I can."

Connolly declared himself 100 per cent healthy on Tuesday and said he's feeling the best he has all year. He returned to the Cougars' lineup with four games remaining in its schedule and picked up three goals and three assists in front of a collection of scouts who made the trips to Prince George, Kamloops and Kelowna.

Although his team had long since been eliminated from the playoffs, Connolly was chomping at the bit to silence the doubters and salvage what was left of his lost season.

"It was good to kind of show people that I wasn't still injured," he said. "If I didn't play the rest of the year, I probably wouldn't be (playing in this tournament) and I think that would have hurt me in the long run. It was good for me to get those last couple games in."

It has been a long and frustrating season for the sharpshooting sophomore whose own expectations were met only by those of the NHL's decision-makers.

He began the year with the Cougars after injuring his right hip in an exhibition game in August and returned to action briefly in December before missing the next two months.

Connolly was unable to do cardio while recovering and subsequently injured his left hip due to a lack of exercise.

"It was pretty sore," he recalled. "I couldn't really do much (working out) even if I wanted to. It was just taking time and letting it heal."

But time was something Connolly was running out of; he spent the majority of his rehab in Prince George, where he lives with his family.

Without its star, the Cougars finished with a Canadian Hockey League low 28 points this season. Connolly felt helpless as he watched his teammates struggle on the ice.

"It was really brutal," he said. "Being in the stands watching your team not do so well, it was definitely hard. You just want to be out there and help as much as you can. It was definitely a hard year.

"The most frustrating part for him was when he would see our doctors and our physio and they would tell him that he's making strides and he just couldn't see it because it did take a long time," Cougars general manager Dallas Thompson said. "It came in small doses and it took him a long time to get over that hump."

Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin are the consensus top two prospects for this summer's draft. However, it's not a stretch to say that, had he been healthy all season, Connolly could have turned it into a three-player race.

He was the first 16-year-old rookie to score 30 goals in the Western Hockey League since Patrick Marleau achieved the feat in the 1995-96 season with the Seattle Thunderbirds. Connolly then parlayed that season into representing Canada as an underage at last year's Under-18 World Championship in Fargo, N.D.

"He's one of those guys that might not get picked as high because of his injuries and he might end up getting healthy and be one of the best players in the draft," said Bob Boughner, who coached Connolly at the Under-18 Memorial of Ivan Hlinka. "I liked the kid when we had him there. While he played, he was terrific."

While Connolly's status has slipped in some draft rankings due to his injury-shortened season, Thompson is confident his franchise player has proven enough while healthy to avoid dropping on draft day. Thompson listed Connolly's elite vision as his greatest attribute.

"He thinks ahead of everyone else out there and he can do some pretty special things with the puck," Thompson said. "He lost a little bit being out, but certainly I think he has that opportunity (to be among the first players chosen).

"Yeah, you're always wondering if you're going to drop or if maybe scouts are going to cross you off the list," Connolly said.

It's hard to imagine any team crossing his name off its list, but if Connolly is able to return to form after a clean bill of health, he will have made up for lost time.