Young Blue Jackets fan goes viral for trick shot goal

Cooper Dennie woke up this morning and was as cool as a cucumber.
The 10-year-old from Powell in suburban Columbus knew he'd try to do something extremely cool tonight during the Blue Jackets game against the Florida Panthers, but if he was nervous, he didn't show it.
"I asked him today, 'Cooper, are you nervous?'" his father, Brian, said. "He said, 'No, I'm gonna nail it.'"

"It" was a spinning, lacrosse-style shootout goal during intermission of the game in Nationwide Arena in front of thousands of fans. And nail it he did, with Dennie perfectly pulling off the trick shot -- to not just roaring applause in Nationwide Arena but Twitter acclaim and a spot on the SportsCenter top 10 as well as Scott Van Pelt's ESPN show.

"I had confidence and I definitely thought I could do it," Dennie told BlueJackets.com. "I still had doubts because everybody has doubt in themselves, but then you just plow through.
"I thought it just dribbled across the line, but then I was like, 'Oh, it's in!' Then I turned to the boards and I saw all these guys (in the stands) and they're like, 'Oh my God.' They were yelling and screaming. I saw somebody spill their beer. It was a lot of fun."
So how exactly did someone so young have such ice in his veins? The old saying is practice makes perfect, and if that's the case, Dennie was going to be perfect.
He first came up with the idea to go big and try the goal this fall when his Columbus Capitals team found out it would be taking part in the shootout challenge, as often happens during intermission of Blue Jackets games.
Tweet from @Arda: LET���S GO COOPER! Absolutely crushed it in front of the @BlueJacketsNHL crowd tonight! cc: @BDennie20 you must be a proud papa!I have alerted @SportsCenter, this must get into the Top Ten pic.twitter.com/RUIv22eVM3
From there, he put in the work, practicing perfecting the move during practice sessions at The Battery Hockey Academy and other practices with the Columbus Amateur Hockey Association.
"I said, 'What are you going to do?'" Brian said. "He said, 'I'm gonna practice to do that.' It was like October. As a dad, when he's at practice doing it during warmups instead of warming up and shooting, I'm like, 'Dude, stop wasting your time.' But he just kept doing it."
And, as we said, practice makes perfect.
"I put my mind to it and I stuck with it, and here it is like four months later," Cooper said. "I was able last year when I was just a squirt to just pick up the puck when I was just standing. My coaches were like, 'Whoa, that was really cool.' This year I learned how to pick it up when I was moving, and then I learned to watch videos on how to do that move and spin around and time the puck to throw it like that. I've been counting down the days."
As Cooper said, like any 10-year-old, he spends a lot of time watching trick shot videos from YouTube stars like Pavel Barber and Andrew "Nasher" Telfer, and both already have taken notice of the shot.

Cooper said his favorite players with the Blue Jackets over the years have included goalie Sergei Bobrovsky -- who ironically enough was in the building for the goal as he now plays for the Panthers -- and former captain Nick Foligno as well as current CBJ forward Alexandre Texier.
He said he dreams of being a hockey player just like them someday, and it would be hard to bet against him given the skills he showed Monday night. No matter what, though, he has a memory he'll be able to cherish forever on NHL ice.
"It was cool to hear the cheers," he said. "It's being like an NHL player and having a lot of people cheering for you in a stadium I grew up coming to games in."