This would be nice if the Connect tool could do 3 new operations: connect vertices across edges, connect multiple vertices at once, and (summing up both), connecting multiple vertices across edges at once.
The "Distance Connect" is not an alternative for the first case, as it is very limited: the target vertices need to lay between two edge loops. So, it just works in some scenarios.
So, improving the connect tool this way would improve the modeling speed, especially when polishing blocked-out meshes.