There are times when it feels like Arizona Coyotes goalie Connor Ingram materialized out of nowhere, breaking through at 26 years old to become one of the NHL’s top netminders this season.
“You get the guys who are just pure hype machines that go straight to the NHL. And then there’s the guys like us, who grind away for several years before we get an opportunity. I think there’s something to be said for them,” Ingram told ESPN. “Some guys get their opportunities early. Some guys take a couple tries before they figure it out.”
It’s taken seven professional seasons for Ingram to figure it out on the ice, through multiple AHL and ECHL stops, stints with the Nashville Predators and the Coyotes, and nine games in Sweden he’d actually rather forget about.
“Our team over there got accused of throwing games,” said Ingram. “It’s actually a crazy story.”
Ingram has also had to figure things out off the ice, where an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder and lingering depression nearly had him retire from hockey in 2021 — before he sought help.
“I tried to white knuckle it through that kind of stuff. And you can’t,” he said.
Ingram started the season with an 11-5-0 record and a .920 save percentage through 17 games. ESPN analyst and former NHL goalie Kevin Weekes called Ingram “the most underrated goalie” in the NHL this season, and a “top-tier candidate for the Vezina Trophy.” Arizona GM Bill Armstrong called him one of the most important reasons why the Coyotes were a surprising playoff contender two months into the season.
Armstrong claimed Ingram on waivers in Oct. 2022. It was out of necessity, given how thin the team was at the position. But the team’s scouts had also identified Ingram as having all the attributes they were looking for in a goaltender.
The Coyotes felt Ingram played well last season, with a .907 save percentage in 27 games and analytics showed he was above replacement level. Armstrong said Ingram returned this season “in great shape, mentally and physically,” having slimmed down a bit in the offseason.
Armstrong has always seen a similarity between hockey goalies and baseball pitchers.
“As they mature, it comes together at a certain age. Then everybody says, ‘Oh my God, who knew the 26-year-old goaltender could stop the puck?'” he said. “The right opportunity appears and they blow it out of the water.”
Armstrong has a theory that goalies, like pitchers, can get stronger mentally as they improve physically. “They sometimes have to go through all these different ups and downs in their life to learn a little bit at each time,” he said.
Like that situation in Sweden.
“The hockey itself was great,” he said. “But the end of it wasn’t fantastic.”
THE NHL WAS DARK in the fall of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing a delay in the start of the 2020-21 season. Ingram was coaching a youth hockey team in Saskatoon, where he grew up.
After being drafted 88th overall in 2016 by the Tampa Bay Lightning, he had been traded to the Predators in 2019. The Predators informed him that they had found a place for Ingram to play ahead of the NHL season. Goalie Kevin Poulin had been injured while playing for Björklöven, a Swedish pro team. They were looking for a quick fix in goal. Ingram took the offer and traveled overseas.
It was December 2020. Björklöven was second in the league standings for Swedish Allsvenskan, a second-tier league. They were playing a lesser opponent in Mora and built a 3-0 lead during the game.
But something odd was happening in the betting markets during the game.
While Björklöven opened on one sportsbook as a -130 favorite, they were only a -150 favorite having built that considerable lead. Normally, the money line remaining that low would indicate that significant money was being placed on the underdog to rally in the game. But logic dictated they would not.
So, it was curious. Very curious. It got to the point where some sportsbooks were taking the game off their boards because of this seeming inexplicable wagering pattern, given the circumstances of the game.
Mora would, in fact, rally. They scored eight straight goals to win 8-4. Six of the goals were scored on the power play. Ingram gave up five goals on 14 shots in the game before being pulled. As Sportsnet noted at the time, it was Ingram’s final start for the team before his loan agreement to the club expired.
In the aftermath of the loss and the suspicious wagering activity, there were accusations made about Björklöven throwing the game. The team’s CEO, Anders Blomberg, was quick to welcome an investigation into the allegations from the league and the betting company.
“If it turns out to be true, it is of course completely unacceptable and something that must never occur in our association,” he said.
Two days after the allegations were made against Björklöven, the Swedish Ice Hockey Association announced the team and its players had been cleared of any wrongdoing. It found no evidence of match-fixing and reported that the incident was “based on human error” at one of the betting companies.
Unfortunately for Ingram, his reputation had already been seriously damaged. An erroneous report by a Swedish radio station claimed that Ingram had been “fired” after the game by Björklöven for throwing the game.
“This news outlet had our GM’s number. It sent him a text asking if I was involved in [match-fixing], since I was the last guy there on an NHL deal,” Ingram said. “Our GM texted them back and was like, ‘Yep, he already admitted to it. It was totally him. We’ve caught him. He’s going back home or whatever.'”
Except it turned out this was not an SMS conversation between the station and Björklöven general manager Per Kenttä. The unknown person on the other end of the messages answered questions “in a credible way,” as the station later noted in a correction. But it was a wrong number.
“They texted this number thinking it was our GM and whoever this number was just f—ing buried me for no reason. They were just like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have fun with this’ and it almost ended my career. All this stuff comes out about how I’m throwing games. It got picked up back in North America,” Ingram said.
The investigation had cleared the team, and hence had cleared Ingram. Blomberg told Sports Expressen that the radio station report was made on “completely incorrect grounds and on sloppy journalistic work.”
Ingram said the news outlet reached out to him after realizing its mistake.
“They sent me like an email just being like, ‘We’re so sorry we used your name. We had false information. Like, please don’t sue us,'” he summarized.
When Ingram received that email, he was already back in the U.S. with the Predators. He considered continuing the fight to clear his name but was advised by the team not to bring even more attention to the accusations. No action was taken.
“I don’t even know if I’m allowed back in Sweden. I might be on an Interpol list somewhere,” he said. “So that was a tough couple days in my life.”
They’d just get tougher for Ingram.
INGRAM HAD RETURNED TO Nashville after that Sweden debacle, around Christmas time. He wasn’t feeling right. He hadn’t been for a while.
The NHL opened its 2020-21 season in January, a 56-game campaign shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each team was allowed to expand its roster to include a taxi squad in anticipation of COVID-related absences. Ingram was on the Predators’ taxi squad during an early season road trip to Dallas. That’s where he had a heart-to-heart with goaltending coach Ben Vanderklok.
“I just said I didn’t want to do it anymore. That I was ready to go home,” Ingram said.
The two talked more, in depth, about everything that Ingram had been thinking and feeling about his life.
Vanderklok suggested Ingram enter the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance program for help. Ingram credits that as a turning point in his life and career.
“He sent me there instead of letting me retire, and I wouldn’t be here without him,” the goalie said.
He arrived at the program ready to work on what he perceived to be a problem with alcohol.
“I got there and the lady was like, ‘You don’t have a problem with this. You don’t drink every day. You have an OCD problem,'” he said. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, wait, what does that mean?'”
Ingram learned that he had been living with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. He then learned how to define those aspects of his life that were spiraling. He learned about completion tendencies and his “all or nothing” feelings. He came to understand his fear of contamination. He learned where his idiosyncrasies as a goalie ended and his OCD began.
“They obviously overlapped for me. I’m a big routine guy and there’s a line between routine and superstition, where if things don’t go right, then it can cause problems,” Ingram said. “Having a routine is a good thing. Having superstitions of what time you go to bed or what numbers are bad are obviously a different story. At the time, I had no idea of the difference and now like I kind of decipher and decide what’s real or not.”
Ingram said he learned that along with his OCD, he was dealing with depression, much of it linked to the 2018 bus accident involving the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team.
Sixteen people were killed and 13 more were injured when a semi-truck that failed to yield at a flashing stop sign struck a coach bus carrying the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team. Ingram, a native of Saskatchewan, briefly played in the SJHL during the 2013-14 season.
“I was close with a lot of those Humboldt Broncos guys. I lost some really good friends,” he said. “Those kids are my age. A lot of guys I played with.”
While people around the hockey world were leaving sticks outside their front doors in honor the Broncos, Ingram left his goalie mask outside of his as tribute. Logan Schatz, the captain of the team, was a friend.
The only loss Ingram had experienced at that point in his life was losing his grandparents when he was younger. He had never even conceived of a loss like the Humboldt tragedy, or how he’d react to it.
“That was something that I just kind of buried and went about my life,” Ingram said. “It wasn’t great. I was trying to [deal with] it on my own, and obviously I couldn’t.”
Armstrong said the Coyotes were aware of Ingram’s personal history when they claimed him on waivers.
“But we were also aware of the new Connor,” Armstrong said. “We were impressed by who he was on the day that we took him. He’s really at a good place in his life.”
ARMSTRONG SAID INGRAM’S greatest attribute is his hockey IQ, which can be a deciding factor in a goalie’s NHL success. It’s something Hockey Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur helped Armstrong understand when they were both executives with the St. Louis Blues, working on their draft board.
“I went to watch this particular goaltender in the draft, and he said that goalie could never be a starter. I asked him why, and Marty said that he used too much energy to make saves,” Armstrong recalled. “That there was no way he could play the next night or in back-to-back games because he uses too much energy.”
“Connor doesn’t use a lot of energy because his reads are so accurate,” he continued. “When he’s on, the game is very simple for him, and he makes all the saves look extremely easy because of his hockey IQ and tracking the play. It’s off the charts.”
His strong play early on has helped steady the Coyotes, enabling them to contend in the West.
The Coyotes’ season started off unusually, with their preseason trip to Australia for two exhibition games to playing 11 of their first 17 regular-season games on the road. They were a team with a ton of new faces, from veteran offseason acquisitions like defenseman Matt Dumba and forward Jason Zucker to rookie sensation Logan Cooley, who left college to join the Coyotes this season.
Off the ice was the usual uncertainty about the franchise: Voters rejected an arena plan for Tempe, the team vowed to bring an alternative plan to the NHL by midseason, and the Coyotes are playing their second straight season in Mullett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University.
“I think the team was really kind of fragile. Kind of searching for how good they were,” Armstrong said.
Through 27 games, they’ve learned they’re pretty good. The Coyotes, who have made the playoff once in the last 11 seasons, entered Tuesday with a 13-12-2 record (.519 points percentage) that had them in the first wild-card spot in the West, six points behind the Winnipeg Jets for third place in the Central Division.
“It’s been good. I mean, the vibe is always better when you’re winning,” Ingram said. “Just being around the guys when things are going well has been a lot of fun.”
It’s taken a while for the Coyotes to contend again. It’s taken a while for Ingram to make his mark as an NHL goalie.
“You can’t make a seed grow,” said Armstrong. “It kind of does on its own, when it wants to.”
BOSTON — The Red Sox activated All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman from the 10-day injured list before Friday’s game against Tampa Bay.
Bregman, who has been sidelined since May 24 with a right quad strain, returned to his customary spot in the field and was slotted in the No. 2 spot of Boston’s lineup for the second of a four-game series against the Rays. He sustained the injury when he rounded first base and felt his quad tighten up.
A two-time World Series winner who spent the first nine seasons of his big league career with the Houston Astros, Bregman signed a $120 million, three-year contract in February. At the time of the injury, he was hitting .299 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. Those numbers led to him being named to the American League’s All-Star team for the third time since breaking into the majors with the Astros in 2016.
Bregman missed 43 games with the quad strain. Earlier this week, he told reporters that he was trending in a direction where he didn’t believe he would require a minor league rehab assignment. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Red Sox agreed the time was right to reinstate a player to a team that entered Friday in possession of one of the AL’s three wild-card berths.
“He’s going to do his part,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, the timing, we’ll see where he’s at, but he’s been working hard on the swing … visualizing and watching video.”
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.