The Everything Man: Devin Cooley's Desire To Learn Has Helped Him Improve As A Goaltender

To say Devin Cooley doesn’t stop learning is an understatement. That’s helped the pet-saving journeyman handle a career-threatening concussion, the path to Calgary’s crease, and life itself.When Devin Cooley isn’t busy stopping pucks for the Calgary Flames or taking in a dog who survived their owner’s house burning down or walking his pet rabbit named Tito or playing the ukulele or the piano or the guitar – like Ferris Bueller, never had one lesson – he likes to unwind with a little bit of Albert Camus, David Hume or Seneca. The Younger, not The Elder. Because who among us doesn’t enjoy spending a little time with the great philosophers studying absurdism and stoicism? He draws the line at Friedrich Nietzsche, though, because, well, duh. “Nietzsche’s interesting, but he has a lot of anti-religion stuff, and I don’t know enough about religion to really give him a lot of credit,” Cooley said. “I try to stay away from the metaphysical stuff because it’s kind of like speculation, which I try to avoid.”Glad we got that out of the way. In any event, the cow-patty sandwich that was last season for the Flames – which started with them losing 16 of their first 21 games and ended with them dropping two draft spots, from No. 4 to No. 6, in the lottery – had one beacon of light in a 28-(now 29)-year-old journeyman goalie who finally proved he could play in The Best League In The World™. Has Devin Cooley finally cracked the code? Well, considering that, these days, just about everyone is guessing on goalies from game to game – forget about season to season – it’s anyone’s guess. But the Flames are a team for which many great future things are predicted, in part because they finally feel they have two reliable netminders in 2024-25 Calder finalist Dustin Wolf and Cooley, who was once cut from USHL camps and had his only season as a true No. 1 limited by a serious concussion. The fact that it’s an all-California tandem makes it extra gnarly.Related stories“I would say I’ve had a lot of delusional optimism,” Cooley said. “That’s something you have to have when you’re trying to achieve anything big, whether it’s in athletics or a startup. You need that delusional optimism because the odds are really not in your favor in any of these things.”But even delusional optimism has its limits. When you’ve bounced around and struggled as much to find your place in the game as Cooley has for the better part of a decade, perhaps you have reason to be a little jaded. Cooley watched other guys have success and was well aware he had the tools, the physical size and the talent to do the same, but it often didn’t translate into stopping the effin’ puck when he was supposed to. Turns out it’s really, really hard to play in the NHL, even when you’re the son of a guy who made millions in Silicon Valley in the mortgage-technology industry and gave you every advantage he could, right down to installing an artificial rink in the yard. As the bottleneck tightens and fewer players can fit through it, sometimes you’re maybe not quite as good as you thought. Then you finally find your place in the AHL, and you take a hit to the head so bad that you go from having the best numbers in the league to some of the worst.As it turns out, that career-threatening setback with the Calgary Wranglers in 2024-25 is not what has made Cooley so nihilistic. In fact, he now looks back on the concussion as the best thing that could have ever happened to him. Because it forced him to really examine his mental approach to the game, and it prompted a sea of change that turned his outlook and performance around. He spoke to some professionals about it, but after not hearing anything that resonated with him, he realized this was something he had to take control of if he wanted success. “I was like, ‘Man, if these people can’t help, then who can really help me? There’s a pattern here of the mental side getting in the way of things,’ ” Cooley said. “And the concussion was like, ‘Hey, dude, you’ve got to figure out what’s going on. Nobody’s coming to save you, and the clock is ticking.’ And the older you get, the less chance there is a team is going to want to sign you.”You need that delusional optimism because the odds are really not in your favor in any of these things– Devin CooleyWhat Cooley did then was pretty remarkable. First, he dove into the neuroscience of concussions and gathered as much information about what he was going through as he could. But in the course of doing that, his natural curiosity and love for reading helped him stumble upon a whole treasure trove of coping tools. Sports psychology led to general psychology, which led to philosophy, which led to Cooley realizing he was probably carrying around far too much baggage on the ice. And with that realization, Cooley began to find comfort in things that cause an enormous amount of angst in most people. “I like to really get nihilistic and a little existential,” Cooley said. “I just think, ‘I’m not that important; nobody’s going to remember me. It’s not the end of the world. We’re all going to die at some point. None of this matters.’ ”In fact, Cooley had the exact sentiment embossed on a clothing line that he launched last season, with proceeds from sales going to Parachutes for Pets, a Calgary-based charity that gives people assistance in caring for their pets when they’re at the most vulnerable and unable to do so on their own. That’s how he ended up with his dog Denver, a great big mutt who he and his fiancee, Natalie Weyers, agreed to foster for a while before adopting him permanently. Denver joins Tito, who was originally Natalie’s pet and made the move to Calgary two years ago.Cooley is so engrossed in the mental and philosophical side of things that he’s made it an enormous part of his life. While most NHL goalies have a book on shooters, Cooley has a book on, well, just about everything. We know this because a big part of Cooley’s journey is something he calls The Everything Project, a compendium of thoughts, inspirational quotes, passages and things he’s learned from the two books per week he reads. This way, anytime he’s dealing with a certain emotion, he can reference The Everything Project, which was at 280 pages and counting as of the off-season, and it helps him process it. In doing so, something that was once a weakness in his game has become a strength.Yeah, this all sounds a touch out there, eh? So let’s get a little more granular with it. It’s broken down into the past, present and future and the mental, physical and philosophical. On the hockey side, some of the topics are inner-game focus, the flow state, goals and objectives, purpose and meaning, avoiding burnout, mindfulness and visualization. Pretty standard stuff, really. But the life side is chock-full of wisdom on subjects such as – get ready for it – dichotomy of control, embracing absurdity and fortune’s flux, legacy, death, the insignificance of finite interpretations, avoiding an egocentric worldview and the victim narrative, Buddhism, the root of suffering, combating the ego and the ephemeral nature of success. Again, pretty standard stuff, really. “Every time I read something, I try to add it to a category, and if it doesn’t fit a category, I create a new category,” Cooley said. “It helps you be a better athlete because there’s a lot of sport performance in there, but it’s also tailored to just making me a better human being.”Any sort of expectations you set for yourself are complete distractions– Devin CooleyThe better athlete part, well, you certainly can’t argue with the recent success Cooley has had with the Flames. He finished in the top 10 in save percentage among goalies who played 30 or more games in 2025-26 and finished 10-10-6, despite the fact he played for the league’s lowest-scoring team, a group that scored two or fewer goals in 19 of his 31 appearances. Cooley also finished seventh overall in goals saved above expected at 17.3, according to moneypuck.com. All of that led to the Flames signing him to a two-year extension with a cap hit of $1.35 million that kicks in this season and will give him the opportunity to play multiple full years for the same team for the first time since college.As far as the human being part goes, Cooley is as genuine as they come, an open book who is comfortable in his own skin and unafraid to share his unbridled enthusiasm and optimism with the world. He taught himself to play the piano, then the ukulele and guitar, by watching YouTube and recognizing the different patterns in the scales.And when Parachutes for Pets saw a video of Cooley taking Tito the rabbit for a walk in a stroller, it reached out to him in the hopes of him becoming a celebrity ambassador. Cooley jumped like a rabbit at the opportunity. “A lot of people out there don’t have family, and their only family is their animals,” Cooley said. “So imagine you have a disaster in your life and you’re already in a bad place. You’ve just lost everything, and now you’re going to lose the only family, and we’re going to throw them in a shelter? You know, that’s not right.”It’s all about a better tomorrow amid the seemingly interminable situation today, which kind of reflects the Flames’ on-ice fortunes. The logo last season could have just as well been a burning tire instead of a ‘C,’ but an enormous and aggressive sell-off at the trade deadline has the Flames with a formidable group of futures. If Simon Nemec works out, and that’s a big if, the Flames could put themselves on the path of respectability this season. BBut nobody is under any illusions that the Flames will be in contention, even with their cast of likable players and the eventual return of Jonathan Huberdeau from hip surgery.The Flames will still have all kinds of trouble scoring goals, and that will once again put an onerous burden on Wolf and Cooley.A lot of people out there don’t have family, and their only family is their animals– Devin CooleyLuckily, Calgary has a couple of goalies who have proven they can handle the extra work. The Flames are not appreciably better than they were last season at any position, and they could finish even lower than they did in ’25-26, when they ended up 29th overall. That is, unless their keepers provide them with out-of-this-universe goaltending that turns the 2-1 losses from last year into 2-1 wins. Cooley’s play the past two seasons lends credence to the notion that he may have just figured this thing out. There are more than a few goalies who have taken as long as Cooley has to become NHL regulars. And even though he’s 29, he doesn’t have a lot of pro-hockey miles on him in terms of wearing down his body.Despite his success, Cooley isn’t about to take anything for granted. He’s excited to see what the next couple of seasons hold for him, but living in the moment has worked well for him recently. “Any sort of expectations you set for yourself are complete distractions,” he said. “As soon as you start thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve cracked the code – I’m a great goalie now, and it’s going to be smooth sailing,’ you’re setting yourself up for failure a bit. I’m assuming the league is going to get better and harder every year, so I need to figure out how I can improve, because what I did last year is not sustainable if I don’t find a way to keep pushing myself forward. So I really don’t have any grand vision or expectation of what my potential is.”For action-packed issues, access to the entire magazine archive and a free issue, subscribe to The Hockey News at THN.com/free.Our annual XXL-sized Goalie Issue 2026 edition has everything you need to know about the best and most interesting goalies in the NHL. Inside, you'll find stories on plenty of goaltenders, like Sergei Bobrovsky, Jakub Dobes, Jet Greaves, Jesper Wallstedt, and more.