COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The red beard was the same. The precocious, toothless-thanks-to-Roman Josi grin was the same. Really, the only thing strikingly different about Ian Cole was the unfamiliar No. 23 and red, white and blue of the Columbus Blue Jackets gear that he was wearing.
Tonight, for the first time, Cole will face his former team, the one he helped to Stanley Cup championships and the one that traded him away in late February. That Cole's Blue Jackets could very well face the Penguins in the first round of the playoffs is, well, "definitely different, it's weird."
"I'm sure it will be very intense games, they always are, especially with these two teams," Cole told a group of reporters late Thursday afternoon at Nationwide Arena. "It's different but, like I say, you try to make the most of it. Try to put your best foot forward."
With Cole, the Blue Jackets have certainly put their best skate forward. They are 13-1-1 in their last 15 games and have emerged as a legit Stanley Cup contender since acquiring the shot-blocking, penalty-killing defenseman. Having been around a team or two that has won the Cup, he believes the Blue Jackets "check off all the boxes" to win come June:
Cole has seven points in 18 games since being dealt to Ottawa as part of the three-way trade for Derick Brassard that saw Cole later flipped to Columbus. The trade hardly came as a surprise after his name had been circulated in trade rumors for months. He'd been a healthy scratch for three games in November and seven games in January.
"It's a very unpredictable line of work that we're in," he said. "You try and make the best of it and do the best you can. Kind of what happens trade-wise and lineup-wise and things like that are kind of out of your control. These are all things that you try to deal with. Continue to put out a good product. It's something I try to do."
Cole went from a team that won Cups to a team that hasn't won a playoff series. Some have credited Cole's outgoing personality as being one of the catalysts to Columbus' late-season surge, but he says he's not doing anything differently leadership-wise than he had been doing in Pittsburgh. He says Nick Foligno is the captain, not himself. He doesn't come into the room flaunting his championship rings either:
"My job isn't to come in and try and reinvent the wheel and tell them how I did it, because I'm no one special," he said. "I certainly want to add in where I can and help out where I can. But me being Mr. Vocal, Yell-at-Everybody and Tell-Them-What-To-Do is not really how I am."
John Tortorella, Sullivan's mentor, says he's been quite impressed with Cole -- even his offensive ability -- and what he brings to his team.
"Coley adds an element that I think our guys need to continue to learn from: Make a decision and go," Tortorella said. "There's not a lot of thinking. He makes his decision and he goes. I think that's a proper way to play that position. He's done a really good job.
"He's in your face, doesn't make a lot of mistakes. Quite honestly, his puck handling and skill level was more than I expected. He can make a play. He's not afraid to make a play, which is very important."
Like most Pittsburgh-Columbus games, Cole expected a physical game and joked that he wouldn't cut any deals to go easy on his teammates, most of whom went out to dinner with him Wednesday night.
He holds absolutely no ill will toward them or Pittsburgh. He says he's moved on and isn't looking back at Pittsburgh or what they are or aren't doing on the penalty kill.
"It's something that as a professional you try and move on, and get acclimated in your new surroundings as quickly as you can," he said. "One of the best ways to do that is kind of cut the ties as quickly as you can. Scoreboard-watching or watching their games or checking all their stats, I don't think there's anything beneficial to doing that. I don't know what (the Penguins') situation has been like. I try to say focused on my own game, but we're certainly going to try and score on the power play tonight."
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