The team announced on Wednesday that they acquired Connor Ingram from the Utah Mammoth in exchange for future considerations. Utah will also retain $800k of Ingram’s salary.

There’s a reason for that specific retention number. The $1.15 million leftover salary is the maximum amount a team can bury in the minors without having it count against their cap. Since Ingram cleared waivers last week, the Oilers can start him off in the AHL with the Condors. That added flexibility makes the 28-year-old an ideal reclamation project for a contending team.

Going on waivers was no surprise for Ingram. He spoke with Utah’s front office about a change of scenery and wasn’t with the Mammoth when the team opened training camp in September.

The 2024-25 campaign was a difficult one for Ingram. While many former Coyotes thrived with the team’s move from Arizona to Utah, Ingram went 9-8-4 with a .882 save percentage, losing the starting goalie role to Karel Vejmelka. His season came to an end in March when he joined the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program following his mother’s passing from breast cancer.

That was the second time in Ingram’s career that he sought help from the Player Assistance Program. During the shortened 2021 season, while on the Taxi Squad of the Nashville Predators, the young goalie contemplated retirement, but goaltending coach Ben Vanderklok pointed him in the direction of seeking help. It was a turning point in his career.

Though Ingram went into therapy thinking he had a problem with alcohol, he was eventually diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“I got there and the lady was like, ‘You don’t have a problem with this. You don’t drink every day. You have an OCD problem,'” Ingram told ESPN during his second season with the Coyotes. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, wait, what does that mean?'”
“They obviously overlapped for me. I’m a big routine guy and there’s a line between routine and superstition, where if things don’t go right, then it can cause problems,” Ingram said. “Having a routine is a good thing. Having superstitions of what time you go to bed or what numbers are bad are obviously a different story. At the time, I had no idea of the difference and now like I kind of decipher and decide what’s real or not.”

Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Ingram played for the Humboldt Broncos during his youth before breaking into the WHL with the Kamloops Blazers. When Humboldt’s bus tragically crashed and 16 people were killed in April of 2018, Ingram suffered the loss of former teammates and friends quietly on his own.

“I was close with a lot of those Humboldt Broncos guys. I lost some really good friends,” he said. “Those kids are my age. A lot of guys I played with… That was something that I just kind of buried and went about my life. It wasn’t great. I was trying to [deal with] it on my own, and obviously I couldn’t.”

Originally selected in the third round of the 2016 draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning, it wasn’t until Ingram was with his third NHL organization that he hit his stride at the highest level. Three years after being drafted, he was traded from Tampa to Nashville for a seventh-round pick. After three seasons with the Preds, Ingram was claimed off waivers by the Coyotes in October of 2022.

Ingram had a solid debut NHL season in 2022-23, posting a .907 save percentage over 27 games on an Arizona team that went 28-40-14 playing out of Mullet Arena. The following off-season, Ingram agreed to a three-year contract with the Coyotes worth $1.95 million.

The Coyotes got off to a quick start in 2023-24 thanks largely to Ingram, who was 14-8-0 with a .919 save percentage by the end of December. Though Arizona imploded with a 14-game losing streak in January and February, Ingram was a bright spot, finishing the year with a 23-21-2 record while leading the league with six shutouts.

Ingram’s path from contemplating an early retirement to having a breakout season earned him the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, which is awarded annually to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey.

“You’ve got to put the work in to feel good,” Ingram told NHL.com during his Masterton Trophy-winning season in 2023-24. “You know what sets you off or what makes you calm, whatever it may be. It’s like addiction. You know if you go anywhere near that, it’s going to cause you problems, so I stay away from anything that might cause me to have a flare-up or be anxious or anything like that. It’s just putting in work, going to therapy, taking care of yourself.
“It’s like a nagging injury. 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.”

Ingram proved himself with excellent results at the WHL and AHL levels, and he has two successful seasons at the NHL level to his name. When he’s at his best, the six-foot-one goaltender isn’t making flashy and exciting saves because he’s well ahead of the play.

When now-Utah-then-Arizona GM Bill Armstrong was scouting Ingram before making the waiver claim, he noticed something that was previously pointed out to him by Hall of Fame goaltender Martin Brodeur while the two were working together with the St. Louis Blues. While other goalies need to flop around the net, Ingram’s high hockey IQ allows him to play a very calm game.

“I went to watch this particular goaltender in the draft, and he said that [a certain] goalie could never be a starter. I asked him why, and Marty said that he used too much energy to make saves,” Armstrong told ESPN. “That there was no way he could play the next night or in back-to-back games because he uses too much energy.”
“Connor doesn’t use a lot of energy because his reads are so accurate. When he’s on, the game is very simple for him, and he makes all the saves look extremely easy because of his hockey IQ and tracking the play. It’s off the charts.”

The Oilers are heading into the 2025-26 season with Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard as their goaltending tandem. While those two have done enough to get Edmonton to the Stanley Cup Final in back-to-back years, the team was bested by Sergei Bobrovsky and the Florida Panthers both times.

While there’s no guarantee that Ingram will be better than either Skinner or Pickard, his addition brings more competition and urgency to the equation. This is a player who’s been willing to face difficult challenges in the past.

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