Most NHL goalies go through their entire careers without ever skating to centre ice, dropping their gloves and throwing down with their opposite number.
Devin Cooley didn’t come especially close to his first fight last week against the Detroit Red Wings, but he did skate to centre ice while there was a scrum around John Gibson, just in case he was needed.
The Calgary Flames backup has no idea how it would have gone if things had escalated, though.
“I knew I had to go do something and show that I’m willing to stand up for the guys, but I don’t know if I’ve thrown a punch since I was a little kid,” Cooley said with a big grin on his face. “It would have been interesting to see, but I would have tried my best.”
Again, nobody is making a mountain out of a molehill here. There was no goalie fight between Gibson and Cooley, and there was never a moment where it looked like it was actually going to happen.
But when Cooley skated to centre ice, it didn’t go unnoticed.
“He’s not scared of anything, he likes to have fun,” said Dustin Wolf. “I think his answer to me was ‘I just wanted to get involved, I wanted to look like I was doing something out there.’ Good on him, who knows if I get there one day, but good on him for getting out there.”
Calgary Flames goaltender Devin Cooley takes a break during a game against the Nashville Predators.
Together, Cooley and Wolf have put together a string of outstanding performances over the past couple of weeks and it’s been a big part of the Flames’ turnaround. Since the start of December, Wolf has won four of the five games he’s started while putting up a .940 save percentage and a 1.61 goals-against-average. Cooley handled most of the goaltending duties in the last week of November, allowing Wolf to get a bit of a reset.
While there’s little doubt Wolf is going to be getting the majority of the starts from now until the end of the season, they’ve both been doing good work recently and their tandem has been a major reason why the Flames have gone 8-4-1 since November 18 and have picked up the eighth-most points in the NHL over that stretch.
All of that is, obviously, way more important than the possibility of a goalie fight that didn’t happen.
Still, though, the brief moment last week got this reporter wondering how goalies view dropping the gloves. Is it something that deep down, they all hope they get to do at least once in their careers?
Not really, it turns out.
“I mean, if it happens, it happens,” Wolf explained. “There’s certainly been some scenarios when you get in the mix but it takes some nuts to get down there. You’d better not die.”
Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf stops this scoring chance by Chicago Blackhawks forward Tyler Bertuzzi at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary on November 7, 2025.
Flames head coach Ryan Huska said he’d prefer that his goalies not get involved in any glove-dropping shenanigans, and that makes sense. The risk of injury is real and no coach wants to see his goaltender get kicked out of a game.
Cooley himself isn’t exactly dreaming of getting the chance to fight another goalie, either, even if he admits to being just a little curious about how he’d do.
“I think for me it would just be interesting to see how I would do,” Cooley said. “I feel like I’m a good skater, I’ve got a long reach, I’d have the balance aspect, but I definitely don’t have the upper body strength. It would have been really interesting. My uncle owns a bunch of karate studios and he sent me a text after the game and said ‘I’ve gotta get you in this summer, I’ve got to train you, I don’t think you knew what you were doing’ so maybe I’ll take some lessons this summer to prepare for it a little better.”
No Mikael Backlund
When the Flames took to the ice on Monday in San Jose ahead of their matchup with the Sharks on Tuesday, Mikael Backlund was nowhere to be seen.
The Flames captain left Saturday night’s win over the Los Angeles Kings early and didn’t return, so it will be worth keeping an eye whether he participates in Tuesday’s morning skates.
Sportsnet’s Jon Abbott reported that Dryden Hunt was on the left of the third line, with Connor Zary in Backlund’s spot at centre and Blake Coleman on the right.
daustin@postmedia.com
on X: @DannyAustin_9