Veteran center Pierre-Édouard Bellemare isn’t yet ready to call it quits. After being somewhat surprisingly released from a professional tryout agreement with the Avalanche during training camp, HC Ajoie of the Swiss National League announced they’d signed him for the remainder of the season.
It’s the first trip overseas in over 10 years for the 39-year-old Frenchman. Bellemare spent most of his professional career in France’s Ligue Magnus and Sweden’s HockeyAllsvenskan and Elitserien (now SHL) before landing his first NHL contract with the Flyers at age 29 after a standout showing for France at the 2014 World Championship. He immediately stuck in the NHL full-time, posting 12 points in 81 games for the Flyers in 2014-15 in a fourth-line role.
Since then, Bellemare has been a dependable and versatile fourth-line piece for the Golden Knights, Avalanche, Lightning, and Kraken. He reached the Stanley Cup Final twice – once with Vegas in their inaugural season and again with Tampa Bay in 2022, but was on the losing end both times. A free agent in the summer of 2023, he inked a cheap one-year deal with Seattle that saw him fall out of a regular lineup spot for the first time since arriving in North America. He was limited to seven points in 40 games with the Kraken, averaging a career-low 9:50 per game and failing to replicate the hard-nosed style that helped him succeed in 700 games at the sport’s highest level.
But even still, Bellemare’s possession results were good. The Kraken controlled 54.9% of shot attempts and 57.4% of expected goals, with Bellemare on the ice at even strength despite deploying him mainly in defensive situations. That could have benefitted a team looking to acquire a reliable extra forward, namely Colorado, who was already familiar with his skill set. He recorded 33 points in 122 games in an Avs uniform from 2019 to 2021. But they passed him up, a decision they’re likely regretting after another rash of injuries to their forward core on top of the trio of Gabriel Landeskog, Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin that they were already missing to start the season.
He’ll now head close to home with an Ajoie team that’s 2-13-1-1 through its first 17 games of the NL regular season with a -36 goal differential. Bellemare is now 700 of the 753 career NHL games on Ajoie’s roster – the other 53 belong to defenseman T.J. Brennan. It’s almost surely the end of the road for him in the NHL, but he’ll still have his chance to make his mark internationally. If Russia is still barred from participating, France will be in the 2026 Winter Olympics.