I said last year that Cole was the one top 6 player Fly doesn't mesh with and vise versa. They do better apart then together as imo they want to do the same things on their respective lines albeit differently. Cole defers far too much to Fly and that is what Fly wants, he wants to be the one man show on his line and always has. Cole hasn't learned to play his game with him, instead taking on more of a defensive and passive offensive role.
He's better when he's more assertive with the puck and we saw that just a couple of weeks ago when he got to drive his line.
As
@Buffdog stated scoring consistency is something that tends to develop later. His game has been more even this year but he's still working on burying those chances. The fact is that he's getting a lot of them and imo with further experience he'll learn to bear down and convert on them.
Also can't expect everyone on a team to be shooting the lights out. We have a number of players having career years with with seemingly almost everything going in for them.