While Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were holding court for a gathering of media Sunday night, the shutout man Connor Ingram sat by himself at his dressing room stall, waiting for his turn in the spotlight.<\/p>\n
And the light is shining pretty brightly on the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> goaltender after Sunday\u2019s 5-0 win over St. Louis.<\/p>\n Not that he craves it.<\/p>\n Nobody is as chill as Ingram, who now has a .917 save percentage and a 2.22 goal average in his nine starts since his hurried call-up from the Bakersfield Condors when Tristan Jarry went down with a lower-body injury in Boston, Dec. 18.<\/p>\n The Oilers are carrying three goalies with Jarry, Ingram and Calvin Pickard and haven\u2019t told him to get a place of his own for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s up to them (an apartment, a house rental). If it\u2019s not broke, don\u2019t fix it,\u201d said Ingram.<\/p>\n He\u2019s on his own while his wife Sarah holds down the fort in California with their two dogs.<\/p>\n What was Ingram\u2019s expectation when called up from the farm?<\/p>\n \u201cFirst thing I thought of was I have zero clothing. We were on a day trip from Bakersfield. All I had was my track suit and a hoodie really. I had to piece some stuff together,\u201d said Ingram who is on a one-year deal after the Oilers acquired him from Utah, after the Mammoth ate part of his contract.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be a part of this for however it will be, is something I\u2019ll remember for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n He was a stud in Arizona, too, before the team moved to Utah. But, that was a different time, a different place, a different scenario for a goalie.<\/p>\n \u201cThis team is built a lot different than that one was. We had some wild years in Arizona before we kind of figured it out. I\u2019m just trying to keep it going here as long as I can,\u201d said Ingram.<\/p>\n The Oilers decided to currently go with three goalies because they can do it under the cap. They had to make a call on Ingram before the Vancouver game on Saturday. If sent down then he wouldn\u2019t have to clear waivers. But he does now. Not that he\u2019s going anywhere.<\/p>\n Tough tumble<\/p>\n With Kasperi Kapanen going down after he appeared to catch a rut in the ice on his fifth shift of the night Sunday, the Oilers are down to 11 forwards. With no firm date on when Leon Draisaitl will return from Germany after he flew home to attend to a family matter, and no cap room ability to call up a winger from Bakersfield if they want to keep three goalie on the roster, the Oilers may just go 11-7 against New Jersey Tuesday with Alec Regula coming back into the lineup.<\/p>\n The Oilers only have $270,833 in cap space unless (a) they want to put Pickard on waivers to send him down or (b) put Kapanen on long-term injury status. Kapanen is only supposed to be out day-to-day with his leg issue with seven more games on this homestand.<\/p>\n The Oilers, likely don\u2019t want to make a call on Pickard until they see Jarry, the probable home starter against New Jersey Tuesday, play more games after missing a month with his suspected groin problem.<\/p>\n Scary skate accident<\/p>\n When Blues\u2019 forward Oskar Sundqvist lost his balance and Connor McDavid<\/a> tumbled over his along the boards in the third period Sunday, he suffered a skate slash to his leg, but he appeared to escape major damage the Blues training staff and players rushed him off the ice.<\/p>\n \u201cHe got a cut just above his ankle, luckily it didn\u2019t touch his achilles. We know the cut was deep. I don\u2019t know how long that takes until he\u2019s back and has flexability in his ankle without hurting the cut,\u201d said Blues\u2019 coach Jim Montgomery.<\/p>\n Joining elite company<\/p>\n Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored in his first NHL game against Pittsburgh and Game 1000 against St. Louis joining nine others in history to do that. Here\u2019s the other starry list:\u00a0 Evgeni Malkin, Marian Gaborik, Milan Hejduk, Alex Kovalev, Joe Nieuwendyk, Luc Robitaille, Gilbert Perreault, Lars Eller and Jean Ratelle.<\/p>\n This \u2018n that<\/p>\n Has there been a better pass from McDavid (in his career) than that spin-o-rama while falling along the right boards and sending a 60-foot bullet through a series of sticks and Blues\u2019 skates for Vasily Podkolzin\u2019s goalmouth finish Sunday night? He made it look ho-hum.<\/p>\n Jordan Binnington\u2019s season from hell continued in the blowout loss to Edmonton. Sunday\u2019s loss marked the 11th time this season he\u2019s given up four goals or more in a game for the Blues.<\/p>\n Binnington, who was named to Canada\u2019s Olympic team will battle for the starting role with Washington\u2019s Logan Thompson and Kings veteran Darcy Kuemper.<\/p>\n Somebody joked that the only thing missing from Nugent-Hopkins 1000th game pre-game ceremony, was one of the thoroughbreds he owns, like his multiple-stakes winning filly Infinite Patience.<\/p>\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t race anymore,\u201d said Nugent-Hopkins.<\/p>\n With the back-to-back shutouts on the weekend of Vancouver and St. Louis, the Oilers joined some rare company, shutouts by at least five goals in back-to-back NHL games. The 70-71 Boston Bruins did it and the 2022-23 Rangers. Their 11 straight goals is second most in Oilers history. The only one better was 14 goals in a row without a reply from Nov. 16-21, 2013.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post, and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were holding court for a gathering of media Sunday night, the shutout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[4059,4095,71,154,95,275,2663,155,368,5862,198,146,5300,1495,5,1268,4812,186,4810,370,907,3153,10620,576,4,24,1480,1469,15,534,6769,893,1588,190,1585],"class_list":["post-416940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton-oilers","tag-alec-regula","tag-bakersfield-condors","tag-blues","tag-boston","tag-boston-bruins","tag-calvin-pickard","tag-connor-ingram","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-darcy-kuemper","tag-david-bloom","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-edmontonoilers","tag-evgeni-malkin","tag-hockey","tag-jordan-binnington","tag-kasperi-kapanen","tag-kings","tag-lars-eller","tag-leon-draisaitl","tag-logan-thompson","tag-mammoth","tag-marian-gaborik","tag-new-jersey","tag-nhl","tag-oilers","tag-oskar-sundqvist","tag-pittsburgh","tag-ryan-nugent-hopkins","tag-st-louis","tag-tristan-jarry","tag-vancouver","tag-vasily-podkolzin","tag-washington","tag-zach-hyman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}