You'll be hard-pressed to find another Edmonton Oilers prospect fans are more excited for than Connor Ungar. Even though he's never played an NHL game, has spent most of his professional career in the ECHL and enters this season well behind Edmonton's established goaltenders on the depth chart, fans will still bring him up.
Ungar played a solid stretch of games with the Bakersfield Condors last season, going 9-2-2 with a .923 save percentage and a 2.51 goals-against average in 13 games. He won his first six starts and recorded a shutout against the Ontario Reign. Prior to that, he had a .945 save percentage in Greensboro, .944 in Fort Wayne and .913 over a longer stint in Orlando. Edmonton signed him in June with another one-year, two-way contract worth $850,000 in NHL earnings.
Ungar's career is the underdog story fans enjoy getting behind. He wasn't drafted or even regarded as Edmonton's next great goaltending prospect when the organization signed him out of Brock University in 2024. Ungar had spent five seasons in the WHL with Brandon, Red Deer and Moose Jaw before going to university, where he went 20-6-0 with a .932 save percentage in his only season at Brock and was named OUA West goaltender and rookie of the year.
The professional route has been even less glamorous. Ungar spent his first full season with Fort Wayne, then packed his equipment repeatedly during 2025-26 as Edmonton's crowded minor-league crease sent him from Greensboro to Fort Wayne, then to Orlando, and eventually to Bakersfield.
When Edmonton announced Ungar's extension in June, some fans immediately joked about another Connor joining the organization, while others were already talking about seeing him in the preseason or celebrating the possibility that he could finally receive regular start in Bakersfield.
During Ungar's run with the Condors last winter, fans called for a larger role, and his reassignment to Orlando in February frustrated those who believed his performance had earned him more AHL starts. By January, prospect discussions among Oilers fans were producing comments that the organization would eventually have to "have a conversation about Connor Ungar," which is a considerable amount of attention for a goaltender who had spent the previous season entirely in the ECHL.
Development in the AHL has humbled enough organizations for the Oilers to make any premature declaration about Ungar's future. He turns 25 during the coming season, and Edmonton has other young goaltenders moving through the system, including Samuel Jonsson and Nathaniel Day, while the organization also acquired Devon Levi this summer. Ungar has earned attention without yet earning an NHL job.
Fans can understand that distinction and still enjoy what has happened. Prospect pools are filled every year with players whose careers were planned almost from the moment they were teenagers, complete with draft rankings, development timelines and expectations attached to their names. Ungar has spent the last several years finding another game to play, stopping enough pucks to earn the next one and moving one level closer whenever somebody finally gave him the opportunity.
Edmonton has spent plenty of money and draft capital over the years trying to find goaltenders, so of course the possibility of an undrafted Calgary kid working his way from U Sports through the ECHL and into the NHL is particularly appealing. Nobody knows whether Ungar will ever get there, but after watching him keep moving through every step the Oilers have put in front of him, fans have found plenty of reason to hope he does.
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