Wild Alumnus Cooley Takes First Bite Out of NHL in 2023-24
SAN JOSE, Calif. – It’s been a full-circle sort of season for Wenatchee Wild alumnus Devin Cooley.
After growing up wearing the logo of the San Jose Jr. Sharks, the former Wild goaltender put on a Sharks jersey in the National Hockey League for the first time this season, becoming the third player from Wenatchee’s former Junior A era to reach the NHL and earning two wins in his first month of big-league hockey.
Cooley’s story in the sport begins on the rinks of Silicon Valley, tagging along with his older brother and mom on a Boy Scout trip – after impressing his family with his skills on that first turn on the ice, they signed him up for the Jr. Sharks youth program, then in its infancy.
After 12 years in the program, from age 5 all the way up to 17, he departed for junior hockey – his first stop was a Muskegon Lumberjacks team built by longtime NHL goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, that saw him in a tandem with current Seattle Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord. The two soon became training partners as well, as Cooley recognized a need to add more specialized training to his natural abilities in net. That summer, he began working alongside Daccord with his dad, Brian, a longtime goaltender coach in the NHL and the German pro ranks.
In 2016, Cooley landed a spot on the Wenatchee roster by way of a trade from the Springfield Jr. Blues, with whom he had tendered before joining the Lumberjacks the previous year. All he did upon arriving in Wenatchee was finish 7-3, shut out opponents in three of those wins, and help spur the Wild to the best record in the British Columbia Hockey League.
“I wasn’t playing a whole bunch, and it was the year before my last junior year (of eligibility). My family advisor at the time had heard that Wenatchee was interested,” said Cooley. “We got treated really well there – the fans were awesome, and the rink and facilities are awesome for a junior league.”
Just five weeks into his stay with the Wild, he had perhaps the most dominant stretch of his career, scoring back-to-back shutouts of the Cowichan Valley Capitals and Coquitlam Express – in all, he would go more than 180 minutes in a row without surrendering a single goal, setting a new team record in the process. Though he and goaltending partner Anthony Yamnitsky still share the club’s Junior A record with a 200-minute combined shutout streak, Cooley still laughs about how long his individual record survived.
“My goalie partner broke it literally maybe a week later,” said Cooley. “I thought that was pretty funny. We were a really solid team.”
Expecting to play a final season of junior hockey in 2017, he took advantage of a sudden opening in the lineup at Denver University, a program just coming off of an NCAA Division I championship under current Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. Montgomery departed after Cooley’s first season to take over the Dallas Stars, but assistant coach David Carle was promoted to the head coaching spot during the 2018 offseason, with an eye toward continuing the program’s culture of success.
Though he never won a national title of his own with the Pioneers, Cooley did enjoy three impressive seasons there, including a sophomore campaign with 11 wins, a save percentage of .934 and a paltry 1.85 goals-against average. With national titles in 2022 and this past April, the championship culture at Denver has indeed continued.
“The culture in Denver is all about winning,” said Cooley. “Guys will really hold you accountable. Everybody expects you to be at your best, and to be a really talented squad. They expect to win every single year, and so they’re going to force you to be at your best – they’re going to hold you accountable and keep you motivated. When you see how much success they’re having and you’re playing with guys who have won a national championship, and you see a banner-raising ceremony, it definitely lights a fire under you.”
In 2020, the pro climb officially began, starting with a pair of games with the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves and a full season in the ECHL with the Florida Everblades. The odd environment of the COVID season in 2020-21 allowed Cooley to get his first taste of the NHL as well, spending time on the taxi squad for the Nashville Predators, who signed him to an entry-level contract that September.
He spent most of the next two seasons in the AHL with the Milwaukee Admirals, but with his entry-level contract finished, Cooley decided to test the free agency waters last summer, landing with the AHL’s Rochester Americans for 2023-24. Though the time to officially step into an NHL net would have to wait a little longer, he did get his first official call to the NHL with an emergency call-up to the Buffalo Sabres in October after an injury to Eric Comrie.
“We’d just played a game in Rochester, and we’d just won. Our coach was talking about the game and then he quickly turned around and pointed at me and said ‘Hey, Cooley’s going to the Show!'” said Cooley. “That was a really cool experience – I just backed up for one game, and I think I was there for one practice too.”
Then, the call came.
The Sabres quietly traded Cooley to San Jose at the NHL trade deadline in March, but his first game in his new organization made waves around the hockey world when he made his NHL debut on March 17 at the Chicago Blackhawks. Chicago would come back for a 5-2 win in that game and follow it up with an overtime win a week later in San Jose in his next appearance, but William Eklund’s first career hat trick helped to vault Cooley into the win column for the first time on April 6. Eklund’s overtime goal capped a 3-2 victory in front of a crowd full of Cooley’s family and friends at the “Shark Tank.”
“It was one of the best feelings of my career,” said Cooley. “The first two games, I wasn’t super happy with, and there were a few unfortunate bounces and late third-period comebacks. To get it against St. Louis, and we won it in overtime, a hat trick on Hat Night, and my whole family was there, it was an unbelievable feeling.”
Win number two brought another full-circle moment, with a 49-save performance five days later at the Seattle Kraken. In attendance at that game were Clark and longtime Wild equipment manager and trainer Pepe Sandoval. On the other side of the matchup for the Kraken? Joey Daccord, Cooley’s old tandem partner in Muskegon, and his longtime training partner. Those small-world moments have been frequent for him since moving on to the pros, including another matchup with Daccord in the AHL playoffs last year.
For Cooley, the full-circle finish to the season even meant living in the same house with his family in nearby Los Gatos, making the same drive into downtown San Jose that he made as a high-schooler playing for the Jr. Sharks.
“As soon as I got traded here, that was all anybody talked about,” said Cooley. “I had so many interviews about it, just how cool it is and how special it is that I played for the Jr. Sharks my entire youth career and I had season tickets to the Sharks, so I was always around the rink. Now I’m practicing in the same rink and the same facilities that I grew up going to. It’s so special to wear the big club’s jersey and be a part of that.”
An unrestricted free agent heading into the offseason, he says he plans to make the most of the available time away from the rink, spending time with family and traveling to see friends before the 2024-25 season begins.
