Promising young goalie appears to be having major issues with the Lightning.

Shocking demotion leads to hurt feelings.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Promising young goalie appears to be having major issues with the Lightning.
Dirk Shadd/Tampa Bay Times/Zuma

There appears to be, at least from the outside looking in, a major rift forming between the Tampa Bay Lightning and arguably their top goaltending prospect and no one really seems to know what the hell is going on.

21 year old goaltender Connor Ingram was an All-Star in the American Hockey League this season and has been an absolutely stud for the Syracuse Crunch, the AHL affiliate of the Tampa Bay Lightning, all season long. It is for those exact reasons that about a thousand red flags shot up when it became known that the young goalie would be demoted to the East Coast Hockey League for the remainder of the 2018 - 2019 regular season. To demonstrate that this was not a performance issue, through 22 games with the Crunch this season Ingram had recorded a 2.26 goals against average and a stellar .922 save percentage, so why then was he sent down?

Well Tampa Bay Lightning insider Joe Smith provided some insight this week when he revealed that the demotion game off the heels of a side trip from Tampa Lightning general manager Julien Brisebois. It was during that side trip that Brisebois visited Syracuse and reportedly met with Ingram to inform him that he would be demoted for the rest of the season. That was on the 6th of March and until now the only comment we have heard from the organization is from Brisebois himself who would only call it an “internal matter.”

Now your first thought would be to suggest that Igram has done something to rub the Lightning organization the wrong way, and I would put money on that being the case, but what could that have been? Well Joe Smith did some digging and in spite of the rumors that have cropped up in Igram's home town of just 400 citizens, nothing concrete has come up. For his part Ingram was steadfast in denying that he had misbehaved. 

“I’ve never got arrested, broke a team rule, got in a fight with a coach or anything like that,” Ingram told The Athletic. “It’s disappointing to see that come out (on social media) and see what people are saying about it. I just think it’s a hockey move.”

You don't demote your top goaltending prospect in the midst of an All-Star season for the sake of simply making a hockey move however, so it's clear that there is more to this story than meets the eye. It seems that there might be some hard feelings on both sides here as well, when Smith spoke to Ingram he was accompanied by a member of the Lightning's public relations staff, and according to Smith it was clear that Ingram had been told to not discuss certain topics. When asked point blank if this entire situation had soured him on the Lightning organization Ingram glanced over to the puiblic relations manager before giving a careful answer.

“I don’t know,” Ingram said. “These are things that if you weren’t pro athletes you could talk about. If you could just sit down with a friend over a beer or something, these are the topics you can have a conversation about.”

According to Smith Ingram denies having demanded a trade from the team, but given both his performance this season and his apparent treatment at the hands of the Lightning, you have to wonder how far off that might be.

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