Friedman: Devin Cooley expected to start on Wednesday against Utah

With Zayne Parekh dressing for the home-opener, the topic du jour for Calgary Flames fans and onlookers to hand-wring over has shifted to goaltending.

Through the first three Flames outings, number-one netminder Dustin Wolf has played every single minute, with backup Devin Cooley patiently working the gate. Cooley’s status as backup has seemed in flux following a challenging final pre-season appearance for both him and Ivan Prosvetov on Oct. 1 – the Flames lost 8-1 and nobody in a red jersey looked good – and there has been some chatter, often from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, that the Flames might be looking at some other options.

On Monday’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast, Friedman provided a brief update: he thinks Cooley is going to play on Wednesday against the Utah Mammoth.

Here’s Friedman:

I’ve been talking a lot about Calgary and their backup goalie position. It sounds now like the Flames have decided they’re going to give Cooley a start on Wednesday. They play Vegas on Tuesday and then they play Wednesday in Utah. I think Cooley gets that start to show that he can keep this job and so that’ll be a big one for him because obviously Vegas is a really tough game. Then you travel. But you know, they definitely were talking to a lot of teams. You know, one of the hangups was having four goalies on one way contracts. I think another hang up was teams were kind of okay, if you want to give us one of your backup goalies, what are you going to pay us to do it? And I think Calgary was resisting that.

(For what it’s worth, when he spoke to the media after Monday’s practice, head coach Ryan Huska indicated that yes, we’ll see Cooley, but “not [Tuesday] night.”)

For reference, the Flames have the following goaltenders under NHL contracts for this season:

• Dustin Wolf – one-way, $850,000
• Devin Cooley – one-way, $775,000
• Ivan Prosvetov – one-way, $950,000
• Owen Say – two-way, $872,500
• Arsenii Sergeev – two-way, $866,250

Right now, the Flames have a decent enough opportunity for everybody to get game reps, with Wolf and Cooley with the Flames, Prosvetov and Say with the AHL’s Wranglers, and Sergeev with the ECHL’s Rapid City Rush. If you drop another goaltender into the mix without removing one, suddenly you have six goalies to manage, which means it’s tougher to get game reps for Say and Sergeev in their first pro seasons – not to mention the logistical and contractual headaches. It’s not ideal.

Cooley was fantastic in the first half of the 2024-25 season before suffering a concussion. Suffice it to say, life would be easier for the Flames if Cooley can find his mojo at the NHL level. And the only way that’ll happen is if he’s given some game reps.

It appears that’ll finally happen on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.