That's a dilemma for me.

Since it was my first time implementing an HttpURLConnection call in Java, I simply relied on the existing implementation I say in the importTable method where the HttpURLConnection#connect() is not explicitly called, making me think it is called automatically by the BufferedOutputStream object when it's BufferedOutputStream#write method is called. 

The same thing seemed to be suggested in various pages I consulted:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10116961/can-you-explain-the-httpurlconnection-connection-process
and confirmed by this page:
http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4192018