An athlete's single-minded focus can be both blessing and curse.
For Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, the Las Vegas terror attack last week hit especially close to home. Just two Novembers ago, the Paris native learned of the terrorist attacks rocking his hometown from televisions in the Flyers locker room.
At the time, he admitted to TSN's Frank Seravalli that he could barely focus on the night's game.
So as the Golden Knights take T-Mobile Arena ice for the first time tonight since the Route 91 shootings, did Bellemare have anything to say to teammates, many younger, about how to concentrate on the task at hand as the city around them recovers?
"You can't really live in fear of these kinds of things happening," noted Bellemare. "When you come to the rink, you focus on the practice coming up. It helps you to not -- for a little amount of time -- not look at the news and see what is happening outside."
As an athlete, it's critical to your livelihood to be able to shrink your focus. But for Bellemare, enlarging is just as important.
"We are kind of in a bubble as athletes," observed Bellemare. "This happens and you realize that one person can affect so many lives. It is scary."
On the flipside, one person can have an opposite effect.
And Bellemare, aware of his relative celebrity as a professional athlete, was excited to step up for his adopted city. The Golden Knights have visited police headquarters, relief centers, and blood banks, each breaking their bubbles to meet survivors and first responders.
Bellemare asserted, "The best part of our career is that we are people who can affect somebody's life in a good way sometimes.
"It's going to go a long way just for us to take a little moment of our time just to brighten their day a little bit."
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Bellemare also touched on how the city of Las Vegas could learn from Paris's recovery:
You don't need this to happen for the community to be stronger. But that sure shows people are standing up and rising together. In Paris, this has happened now a few times. Each time, the people are getting stronger together. It's a beautiful thing to see when bad stuff happens.
For Bellemare, who is French but also of Caribbean descent, a message of inclusion was important to add:
The only thing you can do is help the person next to you.It doesn't matter what the job, the age, or the color, at that point, you just help each other. And that's beautiful.
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