EDMONTON — Imperial, Saskatchewan, is just another pimple on the prairie, as my Dad used to say. And he could say that — he was from Watrous, Sask., just a half-hour drive north.

“There are 390 people in our town,” said Imperial native and Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Then, of course, the surrounding area, with all the farmers.”

According to Wikipedia, there are two “notable people” from Imperial: Knoblauch, and his goalie in Sunday’s 4-3 win over the Vegas Golden Knights, Connor Ingram.

What were they doing back home Sunday night, the only two guys with “Welcome to Imperial, The Home Of…” signs, both on the same team in an NHL game?

“I’ll bet they were in the rink watching it. Maybe the bar,” said Ingram. “I’ll have to text Dad and see what he’s up to.”

The crazy part is, Knoblauch and Ingram didn’t really know each other very well back home — there’s a 19-year age gap between the two. But in a town that small, the two families intertwined.

“His Mom and Dad worked for the school,” Knoblauch said. “Mr. Ingram was our seventh grade homeroom teacher. He was my football coach, track and field coach, volleyball coach, you name it. Yes, I know the family very well.”

“Mrs. Knoblauch, Holly, she was our receptionist at my school my whole life,” Ingram told me back in November. “Bob (Kris’ Dad), he ran the rink when I was really little, and then he refereed basically every minor hockey game I ever played.”

It’s crazy, isn’t it, how fate would lead these two to the same team, at the same time, with Ingram resurrecting a National Hockey League career after spending time in the NHL/NHLPA program due to OCD — Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, a mental health condition characterized by uncontrollable, recurring thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviours (compulsions).

But Knoblauch lost his No. 1 goalie, Tristan Jarry, to injury — “He’s is going to be out a couple of weeks. We won’t see him until the New Year at some point,” he said before the game — and he needed a ‘tender from the farm.

Enter Ingram, who had been searching for his game in Bakersfield after missing camp, and who hadn’t played an NHL game since last February with Utah.

“There was a lot of days I didn’t think it would ever happen again,” Ingram said after his first NHL win in 10 months. “It’s just the truth of it in this world. There are 64 spots in the world to do this, so you don’t take it for granted. Any day that you’re up here, it’s a huge honour.”

Had Ingram been forced to wait for his American League numbers to force a call-up, he might have been down in Bako for a while. He had a goals-against average of 4.04 and a save percentage of .856 for the AHL Condors — not the kind of numbers that had GM Stan Bowman reaching for the phone.

But then Jarry got hurt, and Ingram — for one day at least — seized the opportunity. He didn’t look anything like an .856 goalie, stopping 26 shots as the Oilers clung to its lead after jumping ahead 4-0.

“I think it’s easier (playing in the NHL) — what you think should happen does happen,” Ingram said of the two leagues. “I rely heavily on reading the game. I’ve never been a guy who was fast enough or quick enough to react, so I had to be one step ahead. In this league it’s just easier to do that.

“Where you think the puck is going to go, 90 per cent of the time it does. But it’s also a huge step. It’s a lot faster than what I’ve been used to for the last couple of months.”

A game that saw Trent Frederic healthy-scratched after producing just three points in 36 games likely felt like just another game tacked on to the end of a road trip for Edmonton, which had closed out a five-game roadie just the day before in Minnesota. To come home and beat a division rival in regulation is massive, as Edmonton moves to within two points of first-place Anaheim, sitting tied with Vegas at 42 points.

“They should have been much more fatigued than we were,” admitted Vegas head coach Bruce Cassidy, whose team had lost the night before in Calgary. “It was their sixth game in nine days in six different cities.”

Connor McDavid was once again unstoppable, stretching his points streak to 10 games. He has 24 points in that span, and blazed around the Vegas defence to open the scoring Sunday before adding two helpers on an Oilers power play that went 2-for-3. It’s the top PP unit in the NHL these days, clicking along at 33.3 per cent.