Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
Connor Ingram’s Journey Is Rare — But His Lessons Apply to Every Goalie
- Connor Ingram was cut from Bantam AA at 14 and only began playing goal at age 12, making his NHL career statistically extraordinary.
- Fewer than 20 goalies are drafted into the NHL in a typical year, and less than 3% of those play more than 100 NHL games — Ingram is among them.
- Ingram credits reading the game and thinking ahead as the core skill that compensated for lacking elite size and raw athleticism.
- Late development is rare but real: Ingram's path proves the door isn't always closed early, while also showing just how exceptional outlier stories truly are.
- The paradox for aspiring NHL goalies is that the odds are long enough to be practically discouraging, yet someone always beats them — and you can't win without trying.
Connor Ingram’s path from burgeoning NHL starter with the Arizona Coyotes, to the NHLPA Player Assistance Program, to waivers, to starting in goal for the Edmonton Oilers in the playoffs has been well documented. I don’t want to minimize it, but I also don’t want to rehash it.
Instead, I want to focus on something remarkable Ingram shared in Episode 222 of the InGoal Radio Podcast.
“I got cut from my Bantam AA team at 14. I played Midget AA at 15. Sixteen, I got lucky and got on a good team in Prince Albert. And then 17, I ended up in the Dub (WHL), wasn’t drafted. Eighteen, had a good year, ended up getting drafted,” Ingram said of his path to professional hockey.
It’s no wonder Ingram got cut from Bantam AA at 14. He’d only started playing goal two years earlier. Every sentence he shared there represents a further unlikelihood.
At this stage, you’re expecting the story to become: “Connor Ingram played AA at 15 years old! See, anybody can make it if they try hard enough!” The truth is a bit more nuanced than that. While it is proof that it can happen, its rarity is proof that Ingram’s accomplishments are already exceptional.
I think from the time I was young, I was never fast enough or big enough to get away with just pure athleticism, so I had to learn to read the game and think it before I played it.
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