Last season was a particularly quiet one for UFA center Pierre-Edouard Bellemare with his usage being by far the lowest of his ten-year NHL career. Despite that, the 39-year-old told Norran’s Mille Dybro that he intends to play in the NHL for at least one more year.
Bellemare took a long time to come to North America, not making his NHL debut until his age-29 season. Before that, he spent time in both France and Sweden with a strong showing at the 2014 World Championship helping to secure him a contract with Philadelphia.
Since then, Bellemare has played in 700 games at the top level between five organizations, almost exclusively being deployed in a fourth-line checking role. He has 64 goals and 74 assists to his name while winning 51.5% of his faceoffs over that time. Just seven of those points came in 2023-24, however, as he was limited to just 40 games, missing time with a leg injury while also being a somewhat frequent healthy scratch.
Accordingly, it’s not a big surprise that Bellemare remains unsigned at this point in free agency. A player in his situation is likelier to have to go the PTO route in September over landing a guaranteed contract in August. Fortunately for him, his type of profile is one that quite a few teams will often look at PTOs to potentially fill so he shouldn’t have much difficulty securing one.
Bellemare is expected to play in the upcoming Olympic Qualifying Tournament at the end of the month so it wouldn’t be surprising for any sort of contractual agreement to come until after that point in time; if he signed early, his new team might prefer he not play.
Alternatively, if he isn’t able to get an NHL contract in the fall, Bellemare indicated that he wouldn’t rule out a return to SHL Skelleftea. He is currently training there and spent his last five international seasons with them before coming to the NHL. Returning to finish his playing career there would be somewhat of a full-circle moment for Bellemare but for now, landing another deal at the top level is the priority.