One day in August, Devin Cooley’s phone buzzed.
And it was that text from Flames Goaltending Coach Jason LaBarbera that helped the Calgary netminder break bread with a club legend.
“Barbs texted and was like, ‘Would you want to go out to lunch with Kipper?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, absolutely,’” Cooley recalled during a conversation last week. “I see his jersey in the rafters all the time.
“We went out to lunch and we just talked goaltending, and talked about life and stuff. It was a really good time.”
Miikka Kiprusoff holds Calgary’s franchise records in virtually every major statistical category. And his arrival in the Stampede City helped propel the Flames to that magical playoff run in 2004.
And as a student of the game - and life, according to his fiancée, Natalie’s TikTok account - Cooley was all ears.
“We talked about how in order to stay in the league, you need to constantly be learning, constantly be adapting and changing,” Cooley said of the conversation, which stretched from goaltending chatter to discussion on Kiprusoff’s post-retirement hunting exploits back in Finland. “And he said how if you looked at videos from his game the first year he played in the league compared to his last year, he was a totally different goalie.
“That was something really cool I took away, like always be learning, always be trying to get better. As soon as you stay static and get complacent, then you're going to get replaced. Some guy who's hungrier than you is going to come and take it away.”
Make no mistake, though, Cooley is hungry. After spending his first year in the Flames organization in the AHL, he won the backup job with the big club behind fellow Californian Dustin Wolf, finishing with a .909 save percentage across 31 NHL outings.
That success led to a new, two-year extension in Calgary for Cooley that kicks in this year. More opportunities for the 29-year-old to grow his game, while learning from others.
“Any time I meet another goalie, I just try to ask them as many questions, like what they do for pregame, what their nutrition is like, what supplements they're taking,” he explained. “Just looking at their routine, how they handle their gear, what straps they're using, and just like trying to take away little things. And Kipper actually brought that up. He says he used to do that all the time. He says he loved talking to other goalies.
“It’s really fun because there's not many guys in the world that are in this league and playing at this level that really understand what you're doing, you know? And if you can take away something from somebody else, it's you're just constantly on the lookout to try to improve your game.”
Kiprusoff played nine seasons in Calgary, including a run of seven consecutive campaigns of 70 or more appearances before a farewell campaign during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season.
According to Cooley, his goalie counterpart just knew it was time to move on.
“I asked him when he knew it was time to retire. He said one day he was just going out for morning skate or practice, and he was 37 years old and he's looking at his pads thinking ‘Man, what am I doing? This is a kid's game. This is what children do,’” recalled Cooley. “And he says that's when he knew it was time to hang him up, which I thought was really funny.”
In any profession, seeking out the advice of peers - particularly legends - can be invigorating. And that’s what the conversation was like for Cooley, who’s ready to carry the experiences of last year into this, his second full NHL campaign.
Experiences that included the opportunity to represent his country for the first time, as Cooley suited up for the U.S.A. at the World Championship.
“Obviously not the result we wanted as a team, but I was really happy with my individual performance and I was really glad I got to play as much as I did because it was just an amazing opportunity,” he said of his time in Europe. “Such a beautiful country in Switzerland. I got engaged, my family was there. My fiancée’s family was there. So it was just a really fun experience.
“It’s something that I want to continue to build momentum on. And the building momentum thing, it never stops. Every time you play anywhere, you're trying to take something and build off of what you already have.”
