Color of Hockey: Bellemare rode character, work ethic approaching 700th NHL game

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Seattle Kraken forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare who is approaching his 700th NHL game after signing as an undrafted 29-year-old from France in 2014.

Pierre-Edouard Bellemare thought his NHL career would be brief, if at all, when he signed a one-year contract with the Philadelphia Flyers on June 11, 2014.

What are the chances of an undrafted 29-year-old from Le Blanc-Mesnil, France, with no previous North American professional experience making it in the top league in the world, he thought.

"To be honest, I didn't even think I was going to reach a game when I got into the League," Bellemare said. "I remember thinking my career is more behind me than in front of me."

That's why the Seattle Kraken forward, now 39, spoke with a hint of amazement and sense of pride approaching his 700th NHL game.

"I'm proud of it, but it's a little bit surreal because I'm a French hockey player," Bellemare said. "I'm not a French-Canadian hockey player, I'm a French hockey player. I've been told my whole life that this is something that is not doable, just to come into this league. To be able to be here, I don't think I'll realize it until I actually look back at the end my career, I think."

Bellemare's improbable NHL journey began with three seasons in Philadelphia (2014-17) followed by stints with the Golden Knights (2017-19), Colorado Avalanche (2019-21) and Tampa Bay Lightning (2021-23) before he signed a one-year contract with the Kraken on July 7, 2023. He played in the Stanley Cup Final for the Golden Knights in 2018 and the Lightning in 2022.

Primarily a checking line forward and penalty-kill specialist, Bellemare has 137 points (64 goals, 73 assists) in 696 regular season games and 15 points (five goals, 10 assists) in 85 Stanley Cup Playoff games.

"The character, the work ethic, the training that he puts in in the summers, the toughness that he carries himself ... playing night in and night out, playing through injuries, handling all these situations very well," said Craig Berube, Bellemare's first coach with the Flyers in 2014-15. "Him being satisfied with his role and doing his job, that's what it really boils down to. And that's why teams still want him to play at 39 and maybe next year at 40, because they know what they're going to get night in and night out from him."

Bellemare began playing when he was 6 after he and his 10-year-old brother, Geoffroy-Alexis, tagged along with their 13-year-old sister, Aurore-Annick, for a hockey lesson and decided to give the sport a try.

A figure skating/hockey coach noticed the children and asked their late mother, Frederique, about how many times they had been on ice. He asked her to bring them back and later suggested that she sign the boys up for hockey.

Doing that took sacrifice for an impoverished family with five children.

"Hockey is not a sport you do if you have financial issues," Bellemare said. "So at the very beginning, my mom told my brother and I, 'You guys are going to be able to play hockey but it's not just go and give your 10 percent, 20 percent. Otherwise we can put food on the table that we don't have, so when you go to practice, you work. You have fun, but you work, otherwise there is no point doing it.'"

Frederique became a dedicated hockey mom, cramming the family and equipment into a Peugeot 205 and driving for hours to get him to practice and games.

"I remember Pierre-Edouard at the age of 14 crossing the Paris suburbs in a small car with him mom and two sisters, carrying his bag on the RER (Paris rail system)," said Sebastien Roujon, who coached Bellemare and now coaches at the women's national training center outside of Paris. "Pierre-Edouard is a model of self-sacrifice for all French players."

Bellemare played on age-group national teams that traveled around Europe. It's also when he first encountered racism in the sport. He joined the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition in February to become its only Europe-based member.

"I was 14-15 and started going to some eastern countries that hadn't seen many Black people," Bellemare said. "That's changed now, but at the time it was very weird getting racial slurs or racial signs thrown into my face with me not being fully aware of what just happened."

Bellemare made France's top professional league as a 17-year-old with Rouen in 2002-03, and signed with Leksand, which was playing in Allsvenskan, Sweden's second division. He said his time in Sweden made him develop into the defensive forward and team player that's been the trademark of his NHL career.

"I get into second league in Sweden where everybody's drafted, everybody's better than me, everybody's bigger than me," he said. "This was the advice of my mom at the time, 'Alright, let's go back to the grind.' I go back to zero, restart, try to get a little bit better, be a little bit better for the team, not focusing on what can I do for myself, but what does the team need?

"After three years, I become one of the top players in the second league. Then I'm moving to the top league in Sweden and, boom, once again, back to the fourth line playing almost no minutes. And I was, like, 'Alright, I've done this before, let's do it again, let's work. Three years later, it was the first time my name was mentioned by an NHL team."

The Chicago Blackhawks showed interest in Bellemare, but it cooled because of a hip/pelvis injury that limited him to 29 games in 2012-13.

Playing for France at the 2014 IIHF World Championship in Belarus, Bellemare scored the deciding goal in a 3-2 shootout win in a preliminary-round game against Canada. He had been speaking with the Montreal Canadiens, but when the Flyers showed interest, he was intrigued. Playing for a United States-based team was attractive because his wife, Hannah, is Swedish-American and wouldn't require a work visa to be employed.

Bellemare signed with the Flyers at 29 and earned a spot as a fourth-line center and top penalty-killer. More than a decade later he's showing no signs of slowing down, focused on helping the Kraken reach the playoffs, winning the Stanley Cup and getting the French men's national team into the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.

He said he plans to play once again for France, ranked 12th in the world by the International Ice Hockey Federation, in a final Olympic qualifier tournament Aug. 29-Sept. 1 in Riga, Latvia. It would be his sixth qualifier tournament.

"I always told my mom, 'The day I stop learning is the day I will stop playing,'" he said. "I'm still learning so I don't see why I would stop because I feel great, unless teams are, like, 'We don't want him.' But that hasn't been the case, and I hope it won't be."