The NHL may have 32 teams heading into the 2026-27 season, but expansion talk resurfaces every offseason, and the league will inevitably feature 33 or 34 teams one day. Recently, The Athletic launched a series that produced a mock Expansion Draft for a fictional 33rd team, based on the 2026-27 rosters.
Considering how deep the Calgary Flames are in their rebuild, the writers opted not to select any players from the club, with many under 25. Instead, they selected goalie Devin Cooley, who just became Dustin Wolf’s backup last year. The 29-year-old from California compiled a 10-10-6 record in 31 games, producing a 2.69 GAA and .909 SV%. In 2023-24, Cooley made his NHL debut with the San Jose Sharks, going 2-3-1 in just six games.
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Before earning a full-time backup role with the Flames last season, Cooley played parts of five seasons in the AHL, appearing in 112 games and posting a 53-41-13 record with a respectable .902 SV% and 3.07 GAA. Moreover, he has built a professional hockey career with stops in the USHL, the ECHL, and with Team USA at the recent World Championships.
Calgary General Manager Craig Conroy signed Cooley to an extension on Dec. 30, 2025, giving him another two years at $2.7 million, the biggest deal of his career.
After taking the long route to a regular NHL job, if Cooley ended up with the fictional 33rd NHL team The Athletic drafted, he’d be hard-pressed to find a spot in a stacked crease. The writers took five goalies in their mock draft, including Filip Gustavsson (Minnesota), Sebastian Cossa (Utah), Leevi Merilainen (Ottawa), Artur Akhyuamov (Toronto), and Cooley.
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Because of the rules regarding the protection lists in Expansion Drafts, The Athletic decided to go with the 7-3-1 model, letting the Flames keep Jonathan Huberdeau, Mikael Backlund, Matt Coronato, Connor Zary, Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, Yegor Sharangovich, Zach Whitecloud, Kevin Bahl, Brayden Pachal, and Wolf.
When the Seattle Kraken joined the NHL in 2021, the Flames protected several superstar names, all of which have since departed the organization except Backlund. Calgary’s last protected list also included Dillon Dube, Johnny Gaudreau, Elias Lindholm, Andrew Mangiapane, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk, Rasmus Andersson, Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, and Jacob Markström. In the end, the Kraken selected Mark Giordano, who would go on to become the expansion team’s first captain.
Meanwhile, when the Vegas Golden Knights came into existence in 2017, the Flames’ protection list included several names from the 2021 one, including Backlund, Gaudreau, and Monahan, but also featured Sam Bennett, Michael Ferland, Michael Frolik, Curtis Lazar, T.J. Brodie, Dougie Hamilton, Mike Smith, and then-captain Giordano. The Golden Knights selected Deryk Engelland, who helped the expansion team reach the Stanley Cup Final in June 2018.
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Although there is no official Expansion Draft on the horizon, it won’t stop fans and media from talking about the possibilities, if and when the moment comes to fruition. Given the youth movement in Calgary, it will be a fascinating time for the club, which will need to sort out their no-movement clauses with several of their core players, knowing that whoever they leave unprotected is someone they may have developed from the draft up to the NHL.
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