Devin Cooley’s perseverance worthy of Masterton Trophy

CALGARY — There were nights in Michigan, long before the NHL dream hardened into anything real, when Devin Cooley sat alone and rehearsed the hardest conversation he could imagine having with his father.

He was 19, a Californian fish out of water in the USHL, and by his own blunt assessment, “the worst goalie in the league.”

He didn’t fit in. It wasn’t working.

“I didn’t have many friends on the team, I was probably just a little weirdo,” said the Flames netminder.

“It was a huge culture shock going from California to Michigan and playing with a bunch of guys from Canada and the Midwest. It was just so different. I didn’t really know how to handle it and then you add that on top of not being able to perform well. Then you’re like, ‘well, maybe I’m not really cut out for this.’”

He spent half that year trying to script the words: Dad, I don’t want to play anymore.

Enter Joey Daccord.

“He said, ‘Hey dude, you should come to my dad’s goalie camp,’” Cooley remembers of his USHL teammate, who now tends twine for the Seattle Kraken.

“I went there for two weeks, and I fell in love with the game again. I was like, ‘oh my god, this is amazing. I’m having so much fun. I love hockey again.’”

It didn’t just save his career, it saved his relationship with the game.

It also set the tone for a journey so improbable, so winding, so emotionally fraught, that the Calgary chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association saw fit to name Cooley as the Flames’ nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy on Wednesday. The award, for perseverance and dedication to the game, is all about honouring journeys like Cooley’s.

His path has never been linear. It’s barely been logical.

He was cut from three USHL camps. He bounced between the NAHL and BCHL. He walked on at the University of Denver and didn’t even travel with the team his first year. He spent five years as a minor‑league depth goalie, including two stints in the ECHL. His NHL resume before arriving in Calgary consisted of six games in San Jose, several of them nightmarish.

And then came last season, the one that was supposed to be his breakthrough.

Finally armed with the structure to complement his size and athleticism, he became an AHL All‑Star with the Wranglers. He was finally a starter, finally playing to his potential.

Then came the concussion. The derailment. The darkness.

“When I came back nothing worked anymore,” he said. “It was like I was a totally different person. I felt like I was just like a ghost haunting the earth.”

For a player who had already questioned his place in the sport more times than he can count, this was the kind of setback that ends careers.

Instead, he turned it into a study.

“I spent an entire off-season working on the mental side of the game and working on understanding the brain, understanding neuroscience, psychology, performance, and everything I possibly could,” said the personable netminder, who often addresses the media with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a counsellor telling campfire tales.

“Because I did that, now the mental side of things is probably the strongest it’s ever been in my entire life.”

Like most of his setbacks, it made him stronger, more enthusiastic, if that’s even possible.

At 28, an age when most goalies have long since been labeled what they are, Cooley opened this season as Dustin Wolf’s backup, with no guarantees.

He now platoons with one of the league’s most exciting young pillars and sits among the league leaders in save percentage and goals‑against average, earning him a two‑year extension. He’s become one of the Flames’ most reliable players and one of their most endearing personalities.

He found out about his Masterton nomination while reading on the couch with his relatively famous rabbit, Tito.

“That’s not even a lie,” he grinned. “I was like, ‘Oh, no way.’ It’s so exciting.”

As the PHWA sorts through all 32 nominees to determine a winner, a story like his will be hard to ignore.

Cooley is the epitome of resilience: undrafted, overlooked, cut, concussed, displaced, doubted. And yet, always, he kept going.

Even when he didn’t want to.

“Yeah, a few times,” he admitted when asked if he ever considered quitting.

“Especially after a really bad day, I would sit there and be like, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can do this.’ Then the next day I would wake up and I was like, ‘I will quit when I’m dead.’ I will never quit.”

On the back of Cooley’s helmet are four letters: IIAS.

It comes from a Dirty South song, but for Cooley it’s become a philosophy.

“It says, ‘if it all stops, could you say that you tried?’” he explained.

“Basically, I just wanted to give it my all every single day, and if it didn’t work out, then at least I could say I tried.”

The Masterton Trophy isn’t about stats, though Cooley has those now.

It’s about spirit. It’s about the players who refuse to let go of the rope, even when their hands are bleeding.

Cooley didn’t just hold on, he kept climbing.

From the worst goalie in the USHL to one of the NHL’s best stories, his journey is a reminder that perseverance isn’t pretty. It’s lonely. It’s painful. It’s uncertain.

But it’s also powerful.

And in Calgary, it’s finally paying off.