Erik Cole had his second brush with the Montreal media when he visited the Canadiens practice facility in Brossard for a photo op Thursday, and in both of his sessions he's been nothing but a breath of fresh air.

His excitement for coming to Montreal has been impossible to hide, his love of the hockey atmosphere of this city has remained consistently high, and his belief that the Canadiens are team on the rise appears to be sincere.

In those two media sessions, there were only two topics that made Cole bristle.

The first came on July 1, when he was asked about his history with injuries and the natural label that comes with that history.

The second came Thursday when he was asked to address another label he's been tagged with, that he's a player who has only performed in a Carolina Hurricanes uniform and the only time he left the team he struggled.

In both instances, Cole made it very clear he wasn't particularly thrilled with the line of questioning, but he answered regardless. And in both instances, he came up with a pretty strong defence suggesting those labels are inherently unfair.

Injury-prone label is easily attached, even if it's wrong

On the injury front, the prevailing wisdom when it comes to Cole is that he hasn't been the same player ever since he was driven head first into the boards by Penguins defenceman Brooks Orpik on March 4, 2006. The hit left Cole with a non-displaced fractured vertebra, the same injury suffered by Max Pacioretty at the hands of Zdeno Chara.

Cole had scored 30 goals in 60 games in the 2005-06 season and was playing in his third NHL game after an appearance at the Turino Winter Olympics with Brian Gionta and Scott Gomez on the U.S. team when the Orpik hit put an end to all of it.

Cole did come back to play the final two games of the Stanley Cup final exactly 15 weeks after his injury and was rewarded with a twirl on home ice with the chalice hoisted high above his head.

It is true that Cole has never come close to the numbers he was putting up at the time of his injury, but what isn't necessarily true is the idea that he's been overly injury prone since then.

Two years ago Cole ran into some injury trouble that forced him to miss 41 regular season games – 10 games for a broken tibia suffered in the second game of the season and 31 with a nerve issue in his shoulder that took some time to be properly diagnosed, largely because of a concern that it was related to his previous neck problem (it wasn't).

But aside from that 2009-10 season, Cole played in 306 of the 328 games he could have played in the four other seasons since the injury. He missed 11 games with a hip issue in 2006-07 and four games with a foot injury, another four games with a cervical injury and one game with the flu in 2007-08. He missed just two games in 2008-09, had his big injury year a season later, and played all 82 games for the first time in his career last season.

"At times I laugh at certain comments that are said or written, not just about myself, but other guys as well," Cole said with a laugh back on July 1, a chuckle that screamed annoyance more than humour. "Not everyone really knows what guys are really going through from time to time in their careers. For me to come back this past season and feel strong and be able to stay healthy, given the style of game that I play, was important. I'm going to get my bumps and bruises, I'm well aware of it. But I can handle most of them.

"I was very proud of how I played this year. Given the circumstances in which the last couple of seasons of my career had gone, I proved something to a lot of other people who were doubting where I was at in my career. There were exit meetings in Carolina – and this is two years ago – (asking) how many good years do you have left? Three or four? I think I can still be a very effective player in this league for five or six years, and not just be effective but be a difference maker."

That was literally the only time in a conference call that lasted over 20 minutes where Cole sounded a bit irritated, a clear sign this label of being injury prone is something that strikes a nerve with him. Frankly, I don't blame him, because for the great majority of his time since coming back from that neck injury Cole has been relatively free of major injuries, even though he seems to consistently get dinged up with minor ailments. For a guy who came back from what could have been a career-threatening injury, that's a major accomplishment.

But since he's never gotten back to his ridiculous scoring pace of 2005-06, and since he had a nerve issue that was feared to be related to his neck but ultimately wasn't, the label has stuck.

Circumstantial evidence  

The other label Cole is often tagged with is as a player whose success was derived from the system in which he was born, and also from the player around whom that system is built.

Once again, this perception is an easy one to arrive at because of a weird circumstance that saw Cole get traded to the Edmonton Oilers in the summer of 2008, only to get traded back to Carolina at the subsequent trade deadline.

His time with the Oilers was widely evaluated in the media as being underwhelming, and not having watched him play very often that season I can only go on my memories of reports coming out of Edmonton that season that trading Joni Pitkanen for Cole was a disaster.

As I note in my NHL.com piece Thursday, Cole's time with Edmonton actually wasn't that bad. It was his start to the season that was bad, but once he made the adjustment his play appeared to improve.

I didn't know that when we were speaking to Cole in Brossard on Thursday, so I asked Cole what went wrong in Edmonton.

"Well, what do you think went wrong, in what way?" was Cole's initial response.

One thing I've learned about NHL players is when they turn the question back on you, it's a clear sign they're not very pleased with your question.

Obviously, I wasn't in Edmonton that season, and that's what I told Cole.

"Oh, O.K.," he said, re-affirming that I had no first-hand knowledge of how well or poorly he played for the Oilers. "I don't think you can say that anything went wrong. I was a player adjusting to a new environment after being with one organization for a number of years. It took some time to get comfortable and to figure things out and to be comfortable with the coach and what he was looking for out of me. The day I got traded, the conversation with (Oilers GM Steve Tambellini) and (then-head coach Craig MacTavish) was that, especially over the past couple of months, it certainly wasn't about my play because I was playing really well. It was about managing assets and that's what they felt they needed to do. To be perfectly honest, at the time I would have been more than happy to stay."

Afterwards, I checked out Cole's production in Edmonton and found that he was right.

He had just 4 goals and 5 assists through his first 33 games in Edmonton and the Oilers were 16-14-3, sitting 12th in the Western Conference on Dec. 27, though just two points out of eighth.

But over his next 30 games Cole scored 12 goals with 6 assists, numbers that would put him on an 82-game pace of nearly 33 goals.

When he was traded back to Carolina at the deadline Cole suddenly became a setup machine, scoring just twice but adding 13 assists in his final 17 regular season games. But he failed to score a single goal and got five assists in 18 playoff games with the Canes afterwards as Carolina got swept out of the 2009 Eastern Conference Final by Pittsburgh.

Essentially, I believe the unusual quirk of Cole being traded away and then re-acquired by the Hurricanes – coupled with his difficult start in Edmonton – is where this other perception was born.

While I'm pretty certain Canadiens fans will not want to give Cole the luxury of two months to get adjusted to a new system and new teammates, it's possible there will be a learning curve that he may struggle with.

Except it won't necessarily be because he's missing playing in Carolina.

When you think back two years ago, a completely overhauled Canadiens roster didn't start playing like a team until March, or even April. On-ice chemistry and familiarity between players is a difficult bridge to build sometimes, especially when you're playing the game at NHL speed and a split second can be the difference between a scoring chance and a turnover.

Perhaps Cole will need some time to get used to the fact he doesn't have Eric Staal attracting most of the defensive attention whenever he's on the ice, or to the intricacies of Jacques Martin's system that calls for wingers to drop back deep into their own end, or to the breakout passes of Andrei Markov and P.K. Subban, or any number of things.

But while that adjustment period may feed the belief that Cole is uncomfortable with anything but a Hurricanes uniform on his back, I would say it is a natural part of integrating yourself into a tightly-woven team that is used to doing things a certain way.

My follow-up question to Cole after the one that had clearly annoyed him about his time in Edmonton was whether or not the perception of his inability to produce outside Carolina bothered him.

"I'm sorry that I can't hide my giggle anymore halfway through your question," he said, producing the same non-humour laugh as before. "It is a little bit comical, but I enjoy it. Go ahead. It's more motivation to come here and play well and perform."

If that is indeed the case, perhaps Canadiens fans should be happy these perceptions exist about Cole, because he appears to be quite determined to erase them once and for all.

To watch Brian Wilde's report on Cole's meeting with the media, click on the video player to the right.