As Devin Cooley enters the spotlight, can the Flames’ pensive goalie afford to be interesting?

Calgary Flames goalie Devin Cooley doesn’t really give interviews any more. What he does now are two-minute TED talks.

Every time Cooley speaks, he comes off somewhere between golden-age Malcolm Gladwell and the Dalai Lama, via San Francisco. Eyes bugged out, grinning like a maniac, absolutely delighted to be speaking to you, doesn’t matter who you are.

Every gnomic statement – “Nothing matters. Nobody cares. We’re all going to die.” – is delivered like a cheer captain on whizz. Every sentence ends in an exclamation mark.

Cooley’s been an online fascination since before the Flames decided that devoting major minutes to a then 28-year-old career minor leaguer didn’t seem like giving up. They’d given up long before.

The initial key to Cooley’s charm was that he either didn’t get or hadn’t heard about the NHL’s interview code. You’re not supposed to be interesting. Wry maybe, but that’s it. Enthusiasm at a 2 out of 10. Never say anything that would make anyone laugh or – much worse – have a think afterward.

Interesting suggests that you believe you are special, which would further suggest that you think you’re better than everybody else. If Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid aren’t interesting, you can’t be either.

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You fully expected Cooley – highly compelling, modestly successful – to be pulled down by this gravity of tedium. If he refused, he’d have to be replaced by some blank-faced Finn who can read English at a Grade 14 level, but pretends he can’t speak it.

Recall another newbie Flame, Zayne Parekh. Last winter, while at the World Juniors, Parekh made the mistake of becoming expansive. He called NHLers “robots” who don’t have “any personality.”

The first thing Parekh did when he got back to the NHL was apologize. The second thing was to sit in the naughty corner for a while. The third thing was never saying anything remotely notable again.

Cooley hasn’t received this message. In defiance of accepted protocol, he’s stayed interesting. A couple of weeks back, he gave his most viral performance yet. It was on the topic of conscious versus unconscious states and their impact on performance.

The hockey-adjacent internet went wild – Niels Bohr in pads – but it wasn’t original stuff. YouTube is awash in academics discussing it. However, coming from a pro hockey player, this was like watching a dog do Hamlet.

You have to admire the guy, and not for being interested in things and able to talk about them. Everyone should be that way. It speaks to the intellectual poverty of our cultural moment that Cooley is such a unicorn.

You admire Cooley because you know how unpopular this must be with a section of his colleagues. By hockey standards, this is unforgivable look-at-me’ism. Nobody’s going to say that out loud – back to the point about being interesting – but you feel certain that many in the league are thinking it.

With that in mind, Cooley could be letting in 40 shots a night and he should still be your favourite goalie. The courage to be different is far more precious than competent conformity. When uncovered, it must be encouraged.

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Cooley could probably keep these plates spinning for a couple more seasons. Being just good enough to hang on to his job, while occasionally lighting up TikTok. He was peripheral enough to present no real threat to the herd. Eventually, the Flames would have to get better and Cooley would have to move on. But a funny thing has started to happen.

Until that interview two weeks ago, Cooley was a so-so No. 2 on a bad team. Dustin Wolf, a more of a standard hockey type, was the No. 1.

Starting sporadically, Cooley had never put together a run of form at the highest level. That made him easy to dismiss as a child of God.

Now he is in the midst of an almighty heater. Having apparently taken over the starter’s spot, he has run off consecutive victories against Carolina, Minnesota, Detroit and Toronto. Next up – Edmonton on the road on Wednesday. Cooley is one more great night away from becoming the big hockey story in Alberta, and maybe the NHL.

Scrub Cooley is one thing, but all-star Cooley – if that’s what’s happening here – is something else. At that point, he can’t be tolerated. People will have to start going for him.

It will begin in the league’s vast ecosystem of knucklehead media. Some meatball is going to say, “I don’t get what this guy’s talking about. Just shut up and play.”

Once brought up, that will allow everyone else to get in on the action. Why is the goalie soaking up so much attention? Why can’t he be like everyone else? Who does he think he is? You wait. It’s coming.

When it happens, one hopes that Cooley is resilient enough to ignore it. He certainly seems that way. Every scrum he does now starts off with some crack about which brain he used tonight. It’s always said with a laugh, but you don’t have to listen too hard to hear the dig. Cooley laughs along like he’s in on the joke, rather than the butt of it. If it bothers him, he doesn’t show it.

In the past, people haven’t expected much from Cooley. A few comments per month, not all of which need be fascinating. Those demands have mushroomed. Now he needs to talk all the time, about everything, and be the Most Interesting Person Alive every time he does.

Managing that when you are out of step with your work culture must take formidable self-confidence. And we’re not even talking about the actual hockey. You still have to do that. Balancing the two would require a truly remarkable personality.

It’s unfair to ask Devin Cooley to do that. It’d be understandable if he began to retreat into himself, and be more like everyone else. Still, totally selfishly, I’m pulling for him to be a one-man Austin, Tex. We need at least one person in hockey to keep it weird.