When the Edmonton Oilers acquired Connor Ingram on Oct. 1, he was little more than a shot-in-the-dark insurance policy.

A gamble, if not a lottery ticket.

He’d been out of hockey for nearly 10 months while attending to his mental health in the NHL Players Assistance Program and nobody knew for certain, including Ingram, if he still had to stuff to be a difference-making goalie when he came back.

The Utah Mammoth didn’t think so. He started 99 games for them over the previous three years but they didn’t even invite him to training camp when the season started and ate $800,000 of his $1.95 million salary when they sent him to Edmonton for future considerations.

It was hockey’s equivalent of don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

And if a fresh start in the Oilers organization was going to be a career revival, it wasn’t happening. Ingram went 4-5-2 with an .856 save percentage and 4.04 goals against average in AHL Bakersfield. Not exactly the stats line of a saviour.

But he hung in there, kept swinging, and here we are, talking about the guy who might have saved Edmonton’s season.

He’s taken over the undisputed No.1 job, starting seven of Edmonton’s last eight games and he’s 7-3-1 in his last 11 starts. The numbers don’t jump out at you, but he’s making the key saves at the right times, not giving up the back-breaking softies and giving Edmonton a fighting chance in every game.

“We knew he was a reliable goalie who played a lot of games, around 50 games for Arizona (in 2023-24),” said Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch. “So he was relied on in that starter’s role. For him to come in, we thought of him more as a solid backup, part-time starter if we needed it.

“Did we envision him playing as many games as he has this year for us? No, we didn’t. But we’re certainly happy that we have him and he’s given us solid goaltending.”

Winger Jack Roslovic sits the next stall over from Ingram in the Oilers room and says there isn’t a player you want to cheer for more than this guy.

“He’s great, we’ve become good friends sitting in our little corner by ourselves,” said Edmonton’s newest 20-goal scorer. “We talk a lot about hockey and a lot about life.

“He’s a really good person, means well. And he has a job I don’t admire in the slightest, being a goaltender for the Edmonton Oilers. But he handles it well. He’s trying. Every day he’s out there working.”

STRONG SILENT TYPE

Ingram is a soft-spoken and thoughtful person as a rule, but when it’s time to get down to business, the walls come up.

“He’s not goalie-quirky, but he gets very locked in,” said Roslovic. “An hour before the game, nobody talks to him. He doesn’t like to say anything. Dead quiet. Just really locked in, really focused.”

Whatever he’s doing, it’s working. As the Oilers continue to find their game, Ingram is getting more and more dialed in to his. Who knows where this going to take them, but in the one-day-at-a-time world of stretch-drive and playoff hockey, the here and now is all that matters, and it’s going good.

“You look around at the goalies in the league and you have those couple of guys who are the big, big dogs or whatever, but he’s right up there in that tier of the other guys,” said Roslovic. “He’s one of the best in the league right now. He’s been great to watch and he’s been great for our team.”

If this year has taught Ingram anything, it’s to not look too far in the future. He knows better than anyone that the lightning fast transformation from not being invited to training camp to being the starter on a Stanley Cup contender can go the other way just as quickly.

Even he admits the last six months are hard to believe sometimes.

“Would you have believed it?” he laughed, adding the one thing he always did believe in is himself. “I don’t think I ever doubted it, but there were days where it seemed like the distant future, or a long way away.

“It’s hard in this business, you don’t really know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what tomorrow holds for me, so it’s been a big learning curve this year of keeping your eyes open and just being as ready as you can whenever that opportunity does come.

“Hockey’s never been easy, so it’s something I’ve had to work at my whole life. That was the whole goal, just put your head down and go to work and whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”

And he’ll be fine with that.

“Like I’ve always said, my job doesn’t change. No matter what league you’re in or wherever you’re playing, I’m going to put my skates on the same way and go and do my job.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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