How to Stop Thinking and Start Winning: Devin Cooley & his Unconscious Brain
"Nothing matters. Nobody cares. We're all going to die." Four starts, 127 saves, a pet rabbit named Tito and the goalie theory that made it all the way to the world's largest podcaster, Joe Rogan.
Devin Cooley has started Calgary’s last four games and won all four, stopping 127 of 133 shots. Before that run, the Flames were 0-5, and their goaltending was stopping .817 of what it faced. Asked after the first of those wins how he did it, Cooley said he had switched off the part of his brain that thinks.
Nine days later, it was on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
What did Devin Cooley say about his unconscious brain?
It started on Sunday, October 18. Calgary beat the Carolina Hurricanes 3-2 at the Saddledome, and Cooley made 34 saves on 36 shots for his first win of the season. Afterward he sat down with Brendan Parker of Flames TV.
“I have to let my unconscious brain do the work because it reacts a lot quicker.”
Devin Cooley with Brendan Parker after the Carolina win, @Sportsnet on X
That was the line Sportsnet put on the clip. The theory around it goes like this: when Cooley is having too much fun, smiling and talking to everybody, he turns from an unconscious goalie into a conscious one, and the conscious version is bad at the job. So he has rules. Through TV timeouts and between periods: don’t smile, don’t talk to anyone, focus on the game. At the final horn he lets it all go.
He said much the same to reporters in the dressing room. “I’m a really bad conscious goalie,” he said, as The Hockey News reported it. On the goals he had allowed: “The past is dead, there’s nothing for you there.” And to anyone worried about the crease, he said “everyone just chill out, we’re going to be fine.”
What did Joe Rogan say about Devin Cooley?
Rogan played the Parker interview on his podcast. He said someone had sent it to him, that he did not know the goalie’s name and that he does not follow hockey. He listened anyway, and compared it to trying to play pool while talking to his friends. His show was Spotify’s No. 1 podcast in the U.S. for a fifth straight year in 2025, Variety reported. Dennis Wideman, the former Flames defenceman, posted the segment on X on October 27.
Devin Cooley on the Joe Rogan podcast, posted by @widemanden on X
“Nothing matters. Nobody cares. We’re all going to die.”
The unconscious brain is not the first Cooley line to leave the building. The first was eleven months earlier.
On Wednesday, November 19, 2025, Calgary beat the Buffalo Sabres 6-2 and Cooley made 28 saves on 30 shots for his first win of that season. Reporters asked him about playing behind a team that had just scored six. His answer, per Daily Hive, was that you have to ground yourself, and that his way of doing it is to repeat one sentence: “Nothing matters. Nobody cares. We’re all going to die.”
It reads as bleak. In context it is a technique. Cooley’s explanation, as Defector reported it, is that when he gets excited or starts picturing the win, he gets careless and lets in soft goals. The sentence takes the stakes out of the next shot. “It just grounds me and I can really just stay in the moment,” he said.
“The past is dead, there’s nothing for you there,” from the Carolina win this October, is the same idea pointed at the goals already allowed. So is the unconscious brain. Three lines in a year, one method: the game in front of him is the only one that counts, and it counts less than he thinks.
The quote became a hoodie
A month after Buffalo, Cooley teamed up with Parachutes for Pets, a Calgary non-profit that helps low-income pet owners keep their animals, on a hoodie and a crewneck. Tito is on the front and back in goalie pads, and the quote is printed on them. All proceeds went to the charity. By December 22 it had taken more than 1,000 orders and raised about $60,000 for a pet food bank and emergency pet sitting, the Calgary Herald reported. Unofficial copies of the quote are sold online too; those are not the charity’s.
Around the same time, to Daily Hive, he put the same idea more gently: “There’s no such thing as failure; it’s just different paths.”
Devin Cooley’s stats this season
| Date | Opponent | Result | Saves | Save % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fri Oct 3 | at Vancouver | L 4-1 | 22 of 25 | .880 |
| Wed Oct 8 | Colorado | L 7-3 | 23 of 30 | .767 |
| Sun Oct 18 | Carolina | W 3-2 | 34 of 36 | .944 |
| Thu Oct 22 | Minnesota | W 2-1 | 38 of 39 | .974 |
| Sat Oct 24 | Detroit | W 4-1 | 29 of 30 | .967 |
| Mon Oct 26 | Toronto | W 5-2 | 26 of 28 | .929 |
Source: NHL box scores.
The first two, at Vancouver and at home to Colorado, were part of the worst start in franchise history. Neither was pretty. The last four are a different goalie: 127 saves on 133 shots, a .955 save percentage, six goals against in four games. All four were at home, and Dustin Wolf dressed as the backup for every one of them.
The Flames have gone from 0-5 to 5-6 in that time. The only win in the stretch that Cooley didn’t start was Wolf’s, 4-2 at Anaheim on October 13.
Is Devin Cooley the Flames’ starter now?
Nobody with the Flames has said so, and the contracts point the other way. Wolf is in the first year of a seven-year deal at $7.5 million a year. Cooley signed a two-year extension last December at $1.35 million a year, a backup’s number.
But the case for Cooley is not only October. On last season’s numbers, the backup was already the better goalie, allowing fewer goals per shot than Wolf over 31 games, and neither of them has ever talked about it as a rivalry. Wolf is 1-4 with an .834 save percentage in five starts. That is a small sample behind a team that couldn’t score in early October, and it is the one Ryan Huska has to manage this week.
Where does Devin Cooley’s idea come from?
It isn’t a new act. Last December, in an interview with Daily Hive, Cooley said he tries to finish about a book a week, mostly philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, to understand how his mind works. He described a whole career in the minors in which one bad game would turn into two or three. “I barely feel any pressure anymore,” he said then.
The rest of October has been the same theory, with a new word. After the Minnesota win, 38 saves on 39 shots, the Flames posted him saying he had been “in a pretty solid flow state” and “kept it pretty chill.” After Detroit, he told Parker the flow had followed him home, where he reads with his rabbit. The rabbit’s name is Tito. Cooley carried him into the rink before the October 10 game, and Sportsnet had a camera on it.
Devin Cooley arrives with Tito, @Sportsnet on X
Golf Digest took the idea to a scientist. In a piece built around Cooley’s interview, University of Rochester psychology professor Jeremy Jamieson explained that practised movements in sports like hockey and golf tend to break down when an athlete starts paying attention to them. Cooley’s version is shorter, and it came with 34 saves.
What four games can tell you
Four starts is a hot week. It is not a goalie change, and the contracts suggest the Flames will not treat it as one. But the man who says he plays best when he stops thinking has, for now, given them nothing to think about.
Devin Cooley’s contract and salary
Cooley signed with Calgary as a free agent on July 1, 2024: two years at a $775,000 average, two-way in the first year and one-way in the second. He spent that first season with the Wranglers. On December 30, 2025, in the last year of that deal, the Flames gave him a two-year, one-way extension worth $1.35 million a year, $2.7 million in all. This season is the first year of it, so his cap hit is $1.35 million, against Wolf’s $7.5 million.
Quick answers about Devin Cooley
Is Devin Cooley married?
Not as of September, when NHL.com described Natalie Weyers as his fiancée in a story about her video of his newest hobby.
What is Devin Cooley’s hobby?
Linear algebra, which he is working through for fun, according to NHL.com. His fiancée, Natalie Weyers, is the one who made it public, with a TikTok on September 8:
@natalieweyers07 on TikTok
He also reads about a book a week.
What is Devin Cooley’s rabbit’s name?
Tito, a lop-eared rabbit who has his own Instagram and has been to the rink.
How old and how tall is Devin Cooley?
He was born May 25, 1997, in Los Gatos, Calif., which makes him 29. The NHL lists him at 6-foot-5 and 192 pounds.
Has Devin Cooley played for Team USA?
Yes, at the 2026 World Championship in May, his first. Through four appearances he had a 1.89 goals-against average and a .922 save percentage, NHL.com reported.
Did Devin Cooley play for the San Jose Sharks?
Yes. He played six games for San Jose in 2023-24, his first NHL games, before signing with Calgary.
Next in Rinkside Dispatch → The Visitors' Book, October: Detroit's Bench Remembers the Saddledome The Saddledome's last season, from the other bench. Calgary-born William Nylander, Blake Coleman's ovation and two ex-Flames on Detroit's staff, on what the building meant. 
