Why Oilers decided to give Connor Ingram a shot

EDMONTON — Hockey can, at times, eat its young.

But every once in a while you run across a Connor Ingram, a player who reaches up for a hand and finds one reaching back. Or more than one.

“People go through things in life,” began Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman, who acquired Ingram from the Utah Mammoth on Wednesday, “and part of it is to support him and get him back.

“When I talked to him, I just said, ‘Hey, we’re here. We believe in you. We’re here to get you back and get your career going again.’ And he was very thankful to hear that.”

This is the story of a well-liked person — described by a former beat writer as “a wonderful soul” — whose mental health and lifestyle had positioned him to be left behind by a game that is always moving forward towards the next shiny new prospect.

Back in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ingram’s obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was so debilitating that it led him to the NHL/NHLPA’s player assistance program. Ingram does not expect ever to completely leave that OCD behind, but thanks to his time in the program he can deal with it now.

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“It’s like a nagging injury,” he told NHL.com’s Amalie Benjamin in January 2024. “If you don’t take care of it, it’s going to get worse. For the rest of my life, I’ll sit in a stranger’s chair and tell them my problems once a week. It’s just a fact of my life.”

Fast forward to this fall, with Ingram on the final year of his contract with the Utah Mammoth, yet not at their camp and somewhat estranged from the organization. Utah general manager Bill Armstrong put Ingram on waivers, and 31 other teams took a pass.

Bowman couldn’t afford to claim Ingram and his entire $1.95-million salary. But just in case, the Oilers’ goaltending department did a deep dive on the player, and their findings presented what Bowman now calls “an interesting opportunity.”

Like everyone in hockey, Armstrong knew Bowman sought goaltending depth. So he made Edmonton a deal: The Mammoth would retain $800,000 of Ingram’s salary, leaving his AAV at $1.15 million — exactly the number that can be buried in the minors without having any salary on a team’s NHL cap.

He became a free player, with much upside. There are no assets going back to Utah in the deal.

“At that point, it kind of changed the calculus a bit for us, in the positive sense. There really was no downside to the situation,” Bowman said.

At Bowman’s end, he spoke with a former teammate of Ingram’s in Nashville.

“Mattias Ekholm said he’s a great guy, and if we get him going he’s the kind of guy who could be lights out,” Bowman said. “Everyone needs support at one time or another. Right now, he’s just excited to be getting a fresh start.”

Throw in the fact that Ingram hails from Imperial, Sask., the tiny farming town that Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch comes from — the two men don’t know each other well but their families are friends back home — and you have the beginnings of a nice human interest story.

In 2023-24, Ingram started 48 games for the woeful Arizona Coyotes. Behind the NHL’s 27th-best team, he posted a .907 save percentage and a 2.91 goals-against average. That is the pinnacle of Ingram’s hockey career, stats-wise.

A one-year, one-off.

“When he’s at his best — and that’s how I always like to look at players, when they’re on top of their game — Connor is a very good goalie,” assessed Bowman. “So now we’ve got to try to get him back to that level.”

In three seasons making 48 starts or more, Oilers No. 1 Stuart Skinner has posted save percentages of .914, .905 and .896 — an average of .906 — behind a superior team. If Ingram can regain that form at age 28, the Oilers would have two goalies of roughly similar abilities — basically an upgrade on current backup Calvin Pickard.

But that conversation is still well down the road, as Ingram begins the long road back to becoming a goalie who can be counted on by an AHL coach first, and then in the NHL.

“He’s going to go to Bakersfield, he’ll get going, and then from that point forward, I guess, it’s a wait-and-see approach,” Bowman said. “He could be (in Bakersfield) for the season. We don’t know. There’s no promises made. We just want to get him back playing hockey, so he’s at his best, and then it gives us a lot of options.”

After a fruitless summer in the goaltending market, Bowman has decided to shore up his goaltending department from the bottom up, rather than make a blockbuster deal for a goalie who would walk through the door as the No. 1 in Edmonton.

If the latter option isn’t available, then the former one becomes a necessary step.

“You’ve got to have options,” Bowman said, “and I feel like this puts us in a much better position today relative to goaltender depth than we were yesterday.”