One doesn’t make it to the NHL level without working hard, but Ed Belfour took it to another level. So says his former teammate, Hockey Hall of Famer Guy Carbonneau in the video at the top of this blog post.
A goaltender must wear more equipment than any other player and generally never leaves the ice during a game. Ed used to like to get into as many of his team’s games as possible, too. He played at least 70 games in a season three times and played 60 or more in six other seasons. In his final NHL season, at the age of 41, he took the ice 58 times for the Florida Panthers. In addition to his 963 regular-season appearances, he competed in 161 playoff games. 43 of those postseason contests went to overtime, where the game does not end until someone scores. So yeah, he played a lot of ice hockey.
To maintain that sort of workload, the Hall of Famer engaged in a relentless fitness regimen. He did triathlons and Pilates. He also put in hours of work on his equipment to ensure it performed as he needed it to in a demanding work environment. By “demanding,” we mean having to pivot lightning-fast to make a save on a Sergei Fedorov or react to a, shall we say, hostile move by the likes of the late Bob Probert.