Belfour Enjoys Outdoors, Coaching Sons in Retirement at LinesMaker

Belfour Enjoys Outdoors, Coaching Sons in Retirement

DALLAS — Before Saturday’s game between the Min­nesota Wild and Dal­las Stars at Amer­i­can Air­lines Cen­ter, the Stars hon­ored Ed Belfour, a 2011 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee and key con­trib­u­tor to their only Stan­ley Cup cham­pi­onship team in fran­chise history.

“Win­ning the Stan­ley Cup in ’99 was a dream come true,” Belfour said in his remarks to a sell­out crowd. “It was an unbe­liev­able expe­ri­ence. I’ll never for­get it. So thank­ful for (for­mer Stars GM) Bob Gainey for bring­ing me here and giv­ing me an oppor­tu­nity to play in such a great city.”

But before the Hall of Fame net­min­der began his pre­pared remarks, the Dal­las fans ser­e­naded him with a rous­ing chant of “Eddie, Eddie,” some­thing which was a reg­u­lar occur­rence dur­ing his time with the Stars between 1997 and 2002.

Dur­ing his 16-year NHL career, Belfour was a six-time All-Star, won the 1991 Calder Tro­phy and a two-time Vez­ina Tro­phy winner.

In 963 regular-season games, he fin­ished with a record of 484–320-125–14, had a career goals-against aver­age of 2.50 and 76 shutouts. In 161 career post­sea­son starts, he was 88–60 with a GAA of just 2.17 and 14 shutouts.

Sev­eral team­mates from that ’99 Dal­las Stan­ley Cup-winning team, a group includ­ing Brett Hull and Mike Modano, were in atten­dance and intro­duced the man of the hour.

“It’s always great to see the fel­las. It brings back all the mem­o­ries,” Belfour said. “You just wish you could keep doing it but unfor­tu­nately, we all get old, right?”

Now 46, he con­tin­ues to live in the Dal­las area. In fact, he recently fin­ished build­ing a house about an hour from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro­plex, where among his pur­suits are hunt­ing, fish­ing and enjoy­ing the out­doors.

“Just pretty much tak­ing it easy, enjoy­ing my time — a lit­tle bit of fish­ing, camp­ing, out­door stuff and hunt­ing, enjoy­ing my fam­ily and friends,” Belfour said when asked about what he’s up to these days.

One way the for­mer net­min­der occu­pies his time is to keep tabs on how his old­est son, Dayn, a fresh­man goal­tender at Nebraska-Omaha is doing. In six games this sea­son, the younger Belfour is 2–1-2 with a 2.55 GAA.

“He’s at UNO and really happy about that. He’s had a few starts this year. He’s been work­ing hard and hope­fully he’ll be suc­cess­ful,” Belfour said of his old­est son. “Hope­fully he’ll learn some­thing at school. That’s impor­tant too.”

But he also has a younger son who is just learn­ing to skate and he enjoys watch­ing him hit the ice at such an early age.

“I’ve got a lit­tle guy. He’s four now and had him on the ice a lit­tle bit too,” Belfour said. “Enjoy watch­ing him skate and learn how to skate.”

He added: “Yeah, it’s def­i­nitely nice when you can work with them a lit­tle bit and when you see them do some­thing out on the ice that you taught them, it’s def­i­nitely a good feel­ing to know that you’ve helped some­body in a pos­i­tive man­ner.”

Belfour admits he doesn’t watch a ton of hockey these days, but he has seen enough of this year’s Stars and specif­i­cally of their cur­rent goal­tend­ing tan­dem of Kari Lehto­nen and Richard Bach­man to offer an opin­ion on their play.

“Well I think they’ve done an out­stand­ing job,” Belfour said. “I don’t watch all the games but they’re very com­pet­i­tive.”

Mike Val­ley is some­one who knows Bach­man and Lehto­nen well as the Stars’ cur­rent goal­tend­ing coach. Grow­ing up in his native British Colum­bia, he remem­bers look­ing up to Belfour and want­ing to emu­late him on the pond.

“He was my hero grow­ing up. I wanted to do every­thing like he did, and I wanted to play just like him,” Val­ley said. “I always liked the way he kept his glove high. I liked the way he was in the but­ter­fly more than other goalies. I liked how he was aggres­sive on shots. He was aggres­sive in play­ing the puck. I liked that he read the puck well.”

Sev­eral years ago, Belfour had a short stint as the goal­tend­ing coach in St. Louis. And now that his house is fin­ished, he won’t rule out a return to the coach­ing ranks in the future.

“Maybe some­day, been build­ing a house the last year and a half has kept me real busy,” he said. “Now that that’s done, maybe I can look at some­thing like that.”

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