Greenville, SC—The day after their recent game against the Atlanta Gladiators, I got the chance to interview a few Swamp Rabbits’: Head Coach Andrew Lord, goalie Jacob Ingham, and defenseman Ethan Cap. Here’s my interview with goaltender Jacob Ingham.
For his start against the Gladiators at home on Wednesday, Ingham played very well, as he stopped 30 of 31 shots on goal and expanded his win record to 11-2 with a 2.64 GAA and 0.920 SV%. I asked what his thoughts were on his performance.
“Yeah, I thought I played well. The game started out hot with a couple of PKs, so it’s nice to get into it and see the puck early on.”
Asked what’s going forward with goaltending upon starting their three consecutive game road trip.
“I’m not really sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. We got a good tandem, but we just gotta keep racking up. We have a tough look coming up against South Carolina; there is lots of travel on the road every single day. So we just gotta try and grind out a couple of wins before we’re back home for the last little stretch.”
Coming back from injury, missing a season from last year, and gaining a contract with the Ontario Reign, I asked if any of that pressure as a contracted goaltender with the AHL affects him at all now that he’s playing in Greenville.
“No, not really too much. Coming off a season last year where I didn’t play and missed a whole year having surgery and being in LA rehabbing. It’s just been one of those things where you didn’t get an NHL deal, unfortunately, and I knew a lot of that had to be with surgery and the kinda’ the unknown about how my health would be. Now that I’m back healthy and playing really well, I just want to continue to improve myself.
Greenville is no new city for Ingham, as he played here before. But I asked for his thoughts on what it’s like to play in familiar territory again.
His response: “It’s nice to be familiar with the area. I knew some of the guys from when I played here two years ago. But it’s just nice – we got a good rink here, we got a good facility, we got a good staff. It makes it easy to come to the rink every day.”
There’s no doubt that goaltenders have the most hard and demanding job on the team, and it’s especially hard when your team accidentally gives up the puck from turnovers or poor puck management. I asked Ingham, through the lens of a goalie, what it’s like when there’s that amount of unexpected intensity in his own zone.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of our job to stop the pucks, so you’re just kind of worried about when pucks are in certain spots where they can potentially get a shot. When you’re in a zone taking a rush, you’re always looking for what the main couple threats will be. I mean, it keeps me on my toes, but the boys have been good with keeping shots at a distance and trying to clog up the front of the net, so it’s definitely helped in that sense.”
Playing on the road is different from playing at home. So I asked if there’s no place like home as a goalie or if playing on the road has a different effect.
“I think playing at home — you kind of know how the whole day is getting structured – you have your certain spots to do your routines, and you know you’re going to get it. So I think being at home holds obviously more comfortably for that, and kind of on the road, sometimes you can be a little bit late to games, and the crowd can get on you early, and you know you don’t really have your normal routine or warm-up spots — you kind of have to map all that out before the game; so there’s a little bit of a difference there, but it’s nice to be on the road sometimes just so you can go and play and not worry about too much stuff before the game.“
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