MILAN, Feb 4 – France forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare describes his Olympic debut at the age of 40 as a dream come true after playing 10 years in the NHL, describing his career as a “very cool story”.<\/p>\n
“It’s tough to wash off my smile right now,” Bellemare said on Wednesday after a practice session on the Santagiulia rink, adding that the only ice hockey available to him on French TV growing up was the Olympics.<\/p>\n
“When I was a kid I had to pay, but we didn’t have the money for that,” he added. “The only hockey I saw when I was a kid was every four years, a game of the national team at the Olympics. So I was born into this Olympic family where, if you ever make it there, it’s an accomplishment of a lifetime \u2013 and now I’m here.”<\/p>\n
Only about a dozen French players have played a game in the NHL, making Bellemare’s decade-long stint remarkable.<\/p>\n
Bellemare, who will turn 41 next month, started his professional career in 2002 in France. After playing in Sweden from 2007-14, he moved to the NHL with the Philadelphia Flyers.<\/p>\n
“I’m from France, born in France, played my whole life in France. And then at 21, I leave to go to a country (Sweden) where, at that time, there was no respect for a French player, really. Then I made my name and, at almost 30 years old, I get to go to the NHL as a French guy,” Bellemare said.<\/p>\n
“This is absolutely crazy. Then you think ‘I’m going to be there for one year’. And then I stayed 10 years.”<\/p>\n
France face Switzerland on February 12 in their opening game.<\/p>\n
“I’m trying to enjoy every single moment, try to live the experience. I know this is my last year. This is the last chance for me,” Bellemare said. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN, Feb 4 – France forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare describes his Olympic debut at the age of 40 as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-458125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}