After San Jose Sharks goalie Devin Cooley stole a 3-1 win from the Seattle Kraken last Thursday, making a whopping 49 saves for just his second NHL victory, the lanky netminder was visibly elated to have had one of the best performances of his life. Jovial as can be, Cooley said during the game he had been reciting wonky phrases to himself like, “There are no thoughts, there is no future, there are no thoughts, there is no future,” and, “Nothing matters, nobody cares, nothing matters, nobody cares.” 

The 26-year-old said those little sayings keep him “grounded” in net, as he tries to clear his mind during games. 

That line, “Nobody cares,” rang a goalie-related bell. It’s one we’ve heard from Seattle Kraken backstop Joey Daccord when we’ve talked to him about his mindset in the crease. And it is not a coincidence that the two players say similar things to themselves to stay focused on the task at hand. 

Cooley and Daccord—who faced each other that night for the first time in the NHL—are good friends who have trained together in offseasons since they were teenagers. But it’s more than just a training partnership. In a way, Cooley says he owes a big portion of his success to Joey and his dad, Brian Daccord. 

Raw talent

Joey Daccord and Cooley met in the USHL when they became batterymates for the Muskegon Lumberjacks. Daccord said Cooley arrived in the middle of the 2015-16 training camp and wasn’t expected to be his goalie partner for the season. But Cooley got a chance to show what he could do in a game against one of the USA NTDP squads and earned his way onto the Lumberjacks. 

“He stood on his head,” Daccord remembered. “He played awesome, and I remember he was so big and so athletic, but I just was thinking, ‘This guy needs some real goalie coaching. He’s so talented.’ You could just tell he had that raw athletic ability.”

That was the rub for Cooley at the time. Born in the hockey not-so-hotbed of Los Gatos, Calif.,  and a product of the San Jose Junior Sharks program, he arrived in the USHL without having ever received full-time goalie coaching. 

Unsurprisingly, 2015-16 was a rough season for Cooley, who posted a 4.28 goals-against average and .873 save percentage in 19 games for Muskegon. But as Cooley floundered, he and Daccord formed a close friendship and began working together after practices. 

“During that year, I was really struggling,” Cooley said. “I think I was last place in save percentage and goals-against average, and Joey kind of took me under his wing and was like my coach during juniors and just gave me a lot of tips and stuff.”

Daccord said he thought that with Cooley’s size and agility, there was something there for him to become a special goalie. 

“I saw a real opportunity,” Daccord said. “He’s a great goalie, a great kid. We were just buddies, and I could see how much potential he had. We had a lot of fun doing that, and he’s always been a very curious kid. Like, he always wanted to get better, always wanted to improve, always asked questions, that kind of thing.”

It so happened that Joey knew a guy who could help Cooley more than even he could. Daccord’s father, Brian, is a pro goalie coach and founder of Stop It Goaltending in Massachusetts. 

“Towards the end of year, [Joey] was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing this the summer?’” Cooley recalled. “He’s like, ‘You want to come train like with my dad in Boston?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. That’d be great,’ so I went one summer, and I absolutely loved it, and then I’ve been going ever since.” 

The right coaching

Enter Brian Daccord, who played seven years in the Swiss National ‘A’ League, and has since held such roles as Boston Bruins goalie coach, director of goalie operations for the Arizona Coyotes, and goalie coach for Boston University. Brian has taught countless elite-level goalies at his camp over the years, from Cory Schneider to Chris Driedger to his son, Joey. 

Brian immediately saw in Cooley what Joey had seen. 

“If you look at baseball players, when they go into training camp, they always go back and they start hitting off a tee,” the elder Daccord said. “And I think what we had to do was have Devin take a step back and work on some of the mechanics and the muscle memory that goes into either making saves or through his structure, and then kind of pulling him back a step so we can move two forward.”

Brian said he remembered Cooley showing up that first summer, getting himself an eight-week-long AirBNB rental, and going to work every day on his game. He said Cooley is a guy that has to be pulled off the ice because he is always working hard to improve. 

“A nice thing about Devin is that he recognized where he needed to work, and that was more on the technical part of his game, the structural part of the game,” Brian said. “He’s a tremendous athlete, but he hadn’t maybe spent as much time on the technical game as he would have liked.”

Part of what gets discussed at camp is the mental side of the goalie position, which explains where Joey and Devin got that “nobody cares” mantra.

“That’s a me thing, I say it all the time,” Brian Daccord said. “If you walk into a rink, no one cares if your flight was late, and you didn’t get in until three o’clock in the morning. No one cares that your pads got stuck somewhere, and you had to use your backup pair of pads. No one cares if you’ve got a cold, no one cares if your girlfriend just broke up with you, no one cares. When you step on the ice, it’s time to perform, regardless, so you can’t use anything that happens to you as a crutch.”

High praise for the Daccords

Joey didn’t have to help Cooley. Teenage goalie tandems can be quite competitive with one another, as they grapple with tension-creating issues like uneven playing time. But Daccord didn’t see it that way. Instead, he went out of his way to help mold his buddy into a future pro, and Cooley has not forgotten this. 

“If you were to ask me in juniors, ‘Hey, how do you play this situation?’ or, ‘How do you make this save?’ I had no idea,” Cooley said. “I was just going out there and winging it. I had no clue what I was doing, but I had a lot of size, I was quick, I was mobile, and so I think they saw that raw talent. With the right coaching, [they thought] I could really make a lot of progress.

“Without them, without Joey and his dad and his family, I definitely wouldn’t be standing here right now. So there’s a lot of credit to him. I’m super thankful for him.”

Joey was flattered to know that Cooley had said that about him, but he sent the praise right back to the Sharks goalie. 

“I think it’s really cool to be included in something like that, but at the end of the day, he put in the work, he put in the effort, and I think that’s the coolest part about the whole thing is he grinded,” Daccord said. “He put in the work, and he’s earned what he’s gotten.” 

Two buddies in the NHL

The game on Thursday wasn’t the first time Cooley and Daccord had crossed paths in competition. They faced each other in the AHL Western Conference Finals last season and both backed up for their respective NHL teams in a 4-2 Kraken win at the Sharks on April 1. 

But this was the first time the two had actually played one another in the world’s best hockey league, so it was a special moment for both. 

“It’s just the coolest thing ever that we’re getting to play each other in the NHL,” Daccord said.

The two exchanged text messages before the game, wishing one another good luck, and although Daccord was not pleased with the outcome, he was happy to see his buddy succeed, and the feeling has been mutual from Cooley’s side. 

“It’s been awesome to see [Joey] this year,” Cooley said. “He’s been absolutely killing it, so it’s been really cool to see. I’ve been getting a little jealous, though, especially at the beginning of the year; I wanted to do that. He’s been a blast to watch.” 

Header photo: Joey Daccord and Devin Cooley pose before an April 1 game between the Seattle Kraken and San Jose Sharks. Photo courtesy Seattle Kraken.