- Connor Ungar opened last season seventh among Oilers goalies with no room in Fort Wayne
- He went 9-2-2 with a .923 save percentage in 13 AHL games once Bakersfield called
- Read below for what Oilers assistant GM Kalle Larsson said about the climb
Connor Ungar began last season as the seventh goalie in the Edmonton organization.
Nobody in the building ranks him there anymore. Oilers assistant general manager of player development and innovation Kalle Larsson spelled out how far down the list Ungar started, and how quickly that changed, in a piece by NHL.com’s Derek Van Diest.
“He’s a really good young goalie and he started the season as our No. 7 in the system, and that’s why we didn’t even have a spot in Fort Wayne for him,” Larsson said. “He went to Greensboro and Orlando in the ECHL, stood on his head and made his mark. He got called up to Bakersfield and did the same thing there.”
The season began in Fort Wayne, Edmonton’s ECHL affiliate, where the 24-year-old got two starts behind draft picks Nathaniel Day and Samuel Jonsson. He won both with a 1.44 goals-against average and a .944 save percentage.
Late October brought a loan to Greensboro, Carolina’s ECHL club, where he went 2-1-1 in four games with a 1.42 GAA, a .945 save percentage and a shutout. Orlando came next, 19 games with Tampa Bay’s affiliate and a 7-8-3 record.
Bakersfield kept calling him back up between those ECHL stints, and he kept winning. Ungar finished 9-2-2 in 13 AHL games with a 2.51 GAA, a .923 save percentage and a shutout, good enough that Oilers fans started asking why he wasn’t getting a look in the NHL.
Check out the stop the Condors posted during his February start in Ontario:
Speaking at Oilers development camp in June, Ungar was asked about that run in the AHL.
“My time in Bakersfield was great, that was a lot of fun,” Ungar said. “I thought that was some of the most fun I’ve had playing hockey. I was playing well there for a long stretch and the teammates were unbelievable.”
Edmonton used four goalies in the NHL last season. Stuart Skinner, Calvin Pickard, Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram all took turns, and none of them finished with a save percentage above .900.
Management reacted by trading for Devon Levi and signing Frederik Andersen on July 1. Those two are expected to share the crease with Jarry.
Ungar got paid too, on a much smaller scale. Here’s Edmonton announcing his one-year, two-way deal worth $850,000 on June 18:
Larsson said the plan is Bakersfield again this season, this time as a full-time AHL goalie alongside Matt Tomkins. That’s a real jump for a player Edmonton signed out of Brock University as an undrafted free agent in March 2024.
The Calgary native still has three NHL goalies ahead of him. He also went from seventh in the system to a guy the Oilers name-check when they talk about their pipeline, and he did it in one season of couch-surfing between four teams.
