The Colorado Avalanche signed free agent forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare to a two-year contract worth $1.8 million per season.
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare is heading to the #Avs on a two-year deal with $1.8 million AAV.
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) July 1, 2019
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare Signs With Colorado Avalanche
Over his five-year NHL career, Bellemare has played for the Philadelphia Flyers and Vegas Golden Knights. He has put up 29 goals and 36 assists for 65 career points in 385 career games. Bellemare has also appeared in 31 career Stanley Cup Playoff games totaling four assists over the course of those 31 games.
Last season he scored six goals and 9 assists for 15 points with Vegas. He also added six minutes in penalties. His possession numbers were 53.6 percent Corsi and a relative Corsi of -1.2. These numbers came while the 34-year-old Bellemare centered the team’s fourth line. He averaged 12:26 of ice time, almost perfectly on-par with his career average. He now heads to Colorado, though, where he’s very likely to fill the same role.
What This Means for the Future
Bellemare was selected by Vegas in the expansion draft by the Golden Knights in 2017. He was a bottom six guy for the Golden Knights and it’s not expected that he will be much more with his new team. One thing he does bring is the ability to play up the middle and on the wing. The France native is close to 50 percent in his career on draws but won a career-high 54.7 percent of his draws last season. These stats make him a reliable bottom-six centre.
The aging Bellemare joins an Avalanche team that has seen a fair amount of changes. They recently acquired Andre Burakovsky via trade and signed Joonas Donskoi in free agency. This gives an already strong Avalanche offence a fresh coat of paint. After signing Bellemare, Colorado still has roughly $30 million in cap space per CapFriendly. They’ll use this space to address their seven RFAs and the hole that UFA Sergei Varlamov left at the goalie position.
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