Olympic Daily: On Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, French hockey, and saying goodbye to an NHL career

Some thoughts after watching France and Germany this morning.

It was either late September or early October when I had my last interview with Pierre-Édouard Bellemare.

I was in Denver for a couple days, attending a practice the day before a preseason game and Bellemare was still trying to keep his NHL career alive as PTO/tryout invite to Colorado Avalanche training camp.

We chatted about the Avalanche, about his prior NHL team, the Seattle Kraken, and how quickly the game was evolving. How on a PTO, he was doing everything to try and stick in the NHL, but he was also painfully aware that the game was going to pass him by sooner or later.

I didn’t know Bellemare super well, but we always had a good professional relationship with me spending most of my career in the Western Conference and him playing for both the Vegas Golden Knights and then the Avalanche.