Cole denies Subban feud
No one beyond the players and the equipment staff truly know what goes on behind the doors of an NHL dressing room.
Not even the coaches, who aren’t in the athletes’ inner sanctum when nerves are raw, tempers are frayed or when these men, individually and collectively, ponder why they suddenly and inexplicably can’t put the puck in the ocean or stop one the size of a beach ball.
Of course, there is no shortage of speculation based on hearsay, rumour, thin sources and secondand third-hand observation about what transpires behind these doors: the cliques, feuds, slights, bruised egos.
So it was that, even before Erik Cole’s stall at the Bell Centre had been fully emptied this week, stories were circulating about a strained relationship with defenceman P.K. Subban, and how this bitterness perhaps had expedited the forward’s trade Tuesday to Dallas.
“I think that’s false,” Cole said Wednesday. “I don’t think that P.K. and I were in conflict. If we were, I don’t think P.K. would have tried to call my phone when I sent a group text to the guys informing them of the trade, that he’d have reached out to me after the fact.”
Cole, like fellow departed veteran Hal Gill before him last May, spoke lavishly about Subban’s potential, about a 23-year-old rearguard who is growing by the shift into a prominent role with the Canadiens.
“P.K. is just an all-world talent, he really is,” Cole said. “He has all the tools in the world. But sometimes, he tries to do more than he needs to.
“Sometimes, that can be less effective.”