Former Utah goalie Connor Ingram to make NHL return

Everyone loves a good comeback story — and former Utah goaltender Connor Ingram is doing his best to write one.

Ingram, the first goalie to ever play for Utah’s NHL franchise, had a hard season last year — both on and off the ice. He took a break from hockey when the health of his mother, Joni, declined. He returned some time after her passing, but his game wasn’t the same.

Advertisement

Later in the season, he stepped away from hockey to participate in the NHL/NHLPA player assistance program, which helps players with challenges, including mental health and addiction. It was his second time in the program, as he’d previously used it to get help for clinical OCD.

While everyone was glad he was getting the help he needed, he and the Mammoth agreed that it was time for them to part ways in the offseason, despite the year he had remaining on his contract. He passed through waivers in September, and shortly thereafter was traded to the Edmonton Oilers.

Edmonton has the potential to be a good spot for him.

Advertisement

It’s geographically the closest NHL team to his home town of Imperial, Saskatchewan. Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch is the only other NHLer from Imperial, and although a generation gap prevented Knoblauch and Ingram from ever living there at the same time, their parents were good friends.

The Oilers, who have lost in the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row, have lacked the goaltending needed to get the job done. They attempted to solve that problem by trading for Tristan Jarry on Dec. 12, but he suffered an injury in Thursday’s game.

They gave up their former starting goalie, Stuart Skinner, in the trade, so they called Ingram up from the minors on Friday to fill in.

Ingram could consider this a tryout for a full-time gig with the big squad. Calvin Pickard, the backup goalie, has some of the worst numbers in the league. If Ingram can prove that he’s still an NHL-caliber goalie, he might have the chance to stay there.

Advertisement

That being said, Ingram’s numbers haven’t been great, either. In fact, both his save percentage and his goals-against average are the worst in the AHL at the time of writing.

Of course, there have been many instances of goalies going on hot streaks and proving themselves — that’s exactly what Ingram did when he broke into the NHL with the Nashville Predators.

“I’ve been doing this for long enough that I have faith in it,” Ingram told Sportsnet’s Mark Spector in an early-November interview. “I don’t feel like I have to make major changes anymore. I’ve got such a big gap in my resume, once you lay a base down, then you can lean on it and go back to it. At the end of the day, it’s just hockey.”

But that doesn’t mean he expects it to be easy.

Advertisement

“You don’t get many more chances at this,” he said. “This isn’t something that you come back from very often. So I kind of accepted that that could be the end, hoping it’s not. When I took a chance to take care of myself, that was the part of it you had to accept.”