Cole Caufield was sitting by a lake in Michigan on Friday, his offseason well underway, as he took questions about winning the Lady Byng, sharing the online space with teammate and friend Nick Suzuki, answering questions about winning the Selke Trophy.Both of them were relaxed, talking about their individual accomplishments, but always in the context of the Montreal Canadiens and the team’s overall success.They were serene and able to see what was ahead of them individually and their team with clear eyes, recovered from the disappointment of their playoff exit at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes a week earlier and able to see the promise those two trophies represented to them in terms of future team success.“With where our group is, it’s now, and we’re excited for that challenge,” Caufield said, sitting by that lake. “I think every year it’s going to get harder, and we know that, but the work that we’ve put in and we’re still going to put in, I think it’s very promising.“Hopefully the special times haven’t happened yet.”If those special times do happen, however, it will be largely based on what happened a week earlier, when things felt less serene, less clear eyed.As the Canadiens came out one by one Monday to explain the end of their playoff run and the promising season one of the league’s youngest teams had just completed, there was one comment that stood out.It came from Caufield, and it was jarring in how raw and honest and brutal it was.“Honestly, I sucked,” he said when asked to assess how his game adapted to the realities of the playoffs. “That’s just plain and simple. I want to be a lot better. I expect a lot more out of myself, and my teammates and coaches do, too. I think there’s a lot more out there. I’m nowhere near satisfied with how that went. Yeah you’re getting tough matchups, but you get that all year. So it has nothing to do with that. I think I can be a lot better, and there’s a long way to go.”What made it so jarring is how well Caufield had responded to pressure situations in the past. He scored four goals in six games the last time he was in the third round, in 2021 as a rookie. He led the NHL this regular season with five overtime goals and 12 game-winning goals. He was second in even-strength goals with 40.Caufield’s regular season was defined by his ability to score important goals. His playoffs were defined by a lack of them. He scored six goals, and while four of them either tied the score or gave the Canadiens a lead, only one came in the third period and none in overtime. That singular third-period goal was his last one, a power-play goal that made it 5-1 Carolina in garbage time of Game 5.But the further context behind Caufield’s comments Monday came from his good friend, Hurricanes defenceman K’Andre Miller, before the start of that Eastern Conference final series. We had a chance to hear Miller and Caufield exchange their love for each other in the post-series handshake line, former teammates at the University of Wisconsin and the United States National Team Development Program.The day of Game 1 of the series, Miller, who had just become a dad for the first time, was asked about how that relationship with Caufield grew at Wisconsin.“We would usually be some of the two last guys at the rink,” Miller said. “I think he taught me so much. He didn’t really realize it, but he was so mature for his age. He just came in and always had a smile on his face and always had that willingness to get better. So I think that just kind of motivated the room and everybody kind of followed along.”Mature is not usually the first word that comes to mind when describing Caufield. In fact, he is known as a constant talker, a constant joker. Miller’s choice of that word to describe his friend merited further questioning.“I’ve known Cole since my U-17 year when he had all the hype around him, this kid, he’s coming in and he’s going to be the next U-17 stud,” Miller explained. “I think anybody who has that type of pressure on him, hype, whatever you want to call it, I think they’re always going to have that little birdie in the back of their ear: I need to perform, I need to be better. He was willing to put in that work; he was willing to do whatever it took to take that next step. Obviously everybody talks about his size, but I don’t think it’s really the size of the dog; it’s the size of the fight.“I think he does a great job of keeping that noise out of his head and just bringing that work ethic every day.”