Inside Devin Cooley's mental transformation with the Calgary Flames

“Nothing matters. Nobody cares. We’re all going to die.”

Calgary Flames goaltender Devin Cooley got everyone’s attention after that quote earlier this season.

It gives an insight into the mental makeup of the Flames’ back-up.

After toiling in the minors for most of his career, Cooley has been a bright light on the Flames this season. At age 28, the personable goaltender from Los Gatos, California, appears to be coming into his own.

And he owes much of it to his mindset.

“I’ve never [had this] before,” Cooley said of his newfound mental resiliency in an exclusive interview with Daily Hive.

“Even after last year, every bad game, it was dark. It’s been like that my entire career. You have a bad game, it’s dark. You have a good game after that, you’re like, ‘Okay, everything’s all good.’ You feel good for the rest of the week, but then you have one bad game, maybe two bad games, and it just goes worse and worse and becomes harder and harder to pull yourself out of that hole.”

Cooley is just four years removed from spending time in the ECHL. He got his first taste of NHL hockey with the league-worst 2023-24 San Jose Sharks, appearing in six games and posting a .870 save percentage.

It wasn’t until last season that he established himself as a starting goalie at the AHL level, posting a .905 save percentage in 46 games with the Calgary Wranglers.

“When you make a mistake, or something doesn’t go your way, it’s all based off your perception. You can perceive it like, ‘Oh man, I screwed up. I’m the worst, everybody hates me, I let everybody down.’ Or you can perceive it like, ‘What a great challenge, I’m excited to learn from this. I cannot wait to get back in and feel really good about it.”

Cooley always believed he had NHL talent. The mental side, however, played a big part in why he wasn’t able to call himself a full-time NHL goalie until this season.

“When you feel down on yourself on a majority basis, it’s not sustainable. You start to question, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ You’re stressed all the time and miserable. It’s just not fun. In this league, when you’re playing every other day, you have no time to feel bad for yourself, and it’s not productive in any way.”

“There’s no such thing as failure”

By now, you can tell that Cooley isn’t your average NHLer.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading,” the 6-foot-5 netminder said. “I try to read about a book a week on all sorts of things, a lot of philosophy, a lot of mental health things, a lot of self-help stuff, psychology, neuroscience, just understanding how my brain works, how I want to live my life, and how I want to perceive negative things that are happening.”

The off-ice work has paid off in spades, as Cooley has posted a 3-3-2 record, along with a sparkling .920 save percentage and 2.17 goals-against average.

But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps in the road.

A game in Nashville last week was the perfect example. After giving up four goals on 16 shots, Cooley was pulled after the second period in a 5-1 Flames loss.

But that didn’t get him down.

“Instead of feeling sorry for myself for one second, it’s, ‘What an exciting opportunity in order to improve.’ You made a couple mistakes, maybe you do some things where you don’t have a lot of energy, didn’t manage your energy levels enough leading up to it. So I started on notes, things I learned from my failure, failure in parentheses.”

Failure in parentheses, because, of course, that is just a matter of opinion.

“There’s no such thing as failure; it’s just different paths, and it’s an opportunity to learn. Every failure is an opportunity, and I just try to learn as much as I can from it. When you realize that, you stop taking yourself so seriously.”

“I barely feel any pressure anymore”

There was no shortage of Cooley doubters back in October, after he struggled in the preseason. People wondered if he would get edged out by Ivan Prosvetov for the backup role after a few shaky performances.

But once Cooley made the team, he was completely locked in.

“For me, I was stoked, but it was also like, okay, now it’s time to really dial it in. That preseason wasn’t good enough, I think everybody knows that. I knew that. I was just really excited to completely lock in, and I just couldn’t wait to get my opportunity to show that that wasn’t me. I wasn’t all the way there. And to show everybody that I could be a really good asset for this team.”

After a stretch in late November that saw him start five of seven games, Cooley has since watched Dustin Wolf pick up three wins in a row, making it unclear as to when his next start will come. Whenever he does get that next opportunity, fans can bet he’ll be ready.

“I barely feel any pressure anymore. I think that’s shown in my games. I’ve had a lot of tough back-to-backs, or I’ve been thrown in when Wolfie’s been taken out, put in tough situations. There’s so many people asking, ‘How do you handle it?’ I don’t think about that at all.

“I am only focused on the external. I’m not worried about myself, I’m worried about what the team in front of me is doing and how I can give my team the best chance to win. It’s been a game-changer. I feel like I can be thrown in any situation now and have success, and I don’t second-guess myself for a second.”

For a goalie who once felt buried by every mistake, having this shift in his mindset may be his biggest win of all.

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