Adrian Dater
There is no future, there is no past. For Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, the Avalanche’s new fourth-line center, there is only the present. While there is no statue of Buddha at his locker stall, Bellemare sounds like he’d be an easy convert to the Dalai Lama.
“If you’re focusing on the future, then you’re stressing about something that hasn’t happened yet,” said Bellemare, in an engaging conversation with Colorado Hockey Now Friday, following his first day of training camp with the Avs.
“Your mind might provoke that happening, because your mind is not focusing on the present. And if you’re focusing on the past, then you’re not seeing what is in front of you, because you’re staying in the past. The best way to prevent the future and forget about the past is just to focus on today. What can I do to be better today, for maybe tomorrow, but I’m still living for today. Life goes so quick, the career goes so quick, that I have to just focus on today, that’s it. I don’t even know what our schedule is for tomorrow. We’re on TV, right? You can see your life job every day, right in front of you. Why focus on it? Just focus on ‘I’m here today. My next five minutes are: I’m going to do my interviews and take off my stuff, gonna go stretch, make sure I do everything so that tomorrow will be a good day. But I’m not going to stress about tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m gonna come home, have a nice afternoon with my family. If I have to work, take care of the kid, it’s fine. Just enjoy the moment. And that’s the best way to give 100 percent every day.”
Maybe it’s not a surprise at how wise Bellemare sounds. He is the oldest player on the Avalanche, after all, at 34. Thing is, he has only been in the NHL for five seasons now. His first year in the NHL came when he was 29, as a Philadelphia Flyer in 2014-15. Born in France, a player for a few years for Dragons de Rouen of the French League, then a player for nine straight seasons in the Swedish League. Bellemare has had one of the more unique paths to the NHL you could find.
After three seasons with the Flyers, Bellemare was an original member of the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017 and was the club’s regular fourth-line center for a team that nearly won the Stanley Cup in year one. The Golden Knights didn’t want to lose Bellemare, but they faced a salary cap crunch this summer and couldn’t compete with the Avalanche’s two-year, $3.6 million offer.
Bellemare will have the same role with the Avs he had with the Golden Knights: fourth-line center, faceoff specialist, penalty-killing specialist, responsible in his own end. Any offense he gets will be a bonus. Bellemare knows his role, and he said the biggest reason why Vegas had so much success its first two years was because everyone knew their role.
“We had no superstars. The biggest star we had was (Marc-Andre) Fleury, and he’s the most humble superstar in the league,” said Bellemare, who won 54.7 percent of his faceoffs last season. “I was a fourth-line guy, but I was allowed to open my mouth as much as I wanted. That’s the key, that eveybody is accountable and that everybody is allowed to talk. The difference in salaries between the top and the bottom guys would make it seem (hard) for that, but it’s key. You need 23 guys who know their role. That’s what we had in Vegas. Because you forget about the salaries, you forget about who is who and you just work your nuts off.”
The Avs have some high-paid superstars. Bellemare says there’s nothing wrong with that.
“The key for us is to make sure that we don’t just rely on them. If you a line that, today, is feeling a little under the weather, then the next three lines (should be) just rolling. In hockey now, in 2019, you need four lines that roll like a tornado,” he said.
Bellemare said it was a quick sale when the Avalanche were the first team to reach out to him on July 1, when he became unrestricted.
“They were very clear in what they wanted from me,” Bellemare said. “I’m 34 years old, coming to a team that wants me and wants me to be even better. That makes me very happy.”