Pierre-Edouard Bellemare finds humor in gaffe about Lake Tahoe

And he’s accepted the fame that resulted from his misunderstanding about frozen water in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“That’s probably the most viral clips I’ve had in my life,” Bellemare said Feb. 12. “It doesn’t matter what my first goal in the NHL was, my first fight or my first things I could have said nice. I said something dumb, and it’s been all over the internet, all over the world.”

During a news conference a day before the Avalanche started their season, Bellemare expressed his excitement about playing the Golden Knights outdoors and noted that he has never skated on a lake in his life.

“We’re not skating on a lake, though,” teammate Andre Burakovsky chimed in.

Bellemare, the linchpin on the Knights’ fourth line for two seasons before he signed with Colorado in 2019, was devastated.

“It’s not on the lake?” he asked.

“No, it’s beside the lake,” Burakovsky informed him.

“No! I thought it was on Lake Tahoe,” Bellemare responded.

“We’re playing on the 18th fairway, bro,” Burakovsky replied.

“Nooo! I didn’t even know. For real? Oh, you just crushed my dreams,” a dejected Bellemare said.

The clip of the hilarious back and forth between Bellemare and Burakovsky quickly spread on social media. Unfortunately, Knights captain Mark Stone said Monday he hadn’t seen the video and couldn’t tease his former teammate about it.

Bellemare, who grew up in France and played professionally in Sweden before coming to the NHL, said his family in Europe gave him a hard time about the mistake. But he’s not the only one who thought Lake Tahoe froze over.

“I just told them, ‘Did you know you couldn’t skate on that lake?’ And they were like, ‘Oh, yeah. No, I didn’t even think about it,’” Bellemare said.

“Everybody made fun of me. Sometimes you have to give a little bit of yourself for people to have a positive day. And I guess that was my gift this time.”

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow @DavidSchoenLVRJ on Twitter.