DORIAN GEIGER
Sports Editor

What in the world would the gentle gracefulness of figure skating have to do with a physically bone crushing game like hockey, other than the fact they’re both performed on skates?

CBC’s television program and popular reality show Battle of the Blades brings both sports together in an epic, yet curiously comical, display of athleticism.

Recruiting former hockey players from the NHL and pairing them up with professional figure skaters, coaches and choreographers is the show’s bread and butter.

In its second season, Battle of the Blades currently boasts a Saskatchewan contestant and former Saskatoon Blade and NHLer in tough-guy Kelly Chase. Chase tallied a total of 17 goals, 43 points and 2,017 penalty minutes during his 12-year NHL career with the St. Louis Blues, Toronto Maple Leafs and Hartford Whalers.

Chase is paired with Kyoko Ina, a Japanese-American figure skater and two-time Winter Olympian.

A vocal ambassador of Saskatoon and the province, Chase is originally from Porcupine Plain, Sask. Having close ties with the University of Saskatchewan, Chase has been instrumental in helping to raise funds for the Huskies men’s hockey program in the past, particularly through coordinating guest speakers like Brett Hull and Wendel Clark for the annual Huskies Off the Leash Luncheon.

Notorious for dropping the gloves over the duration of his 458-game career, Chase rarely backed down from an on-ice scrap. Hell, Chase would go full-tilt against his close friend and former opponent (as well as teammate) Tony Twist just for fun. A simple YouTube search yields handfuls of videos of Chase in such scenarios. No, Chase wasn’t a prolific goal-scorer — but his rock ’em, sock ’em, never-back-down brand of hockey made him a perfect candidate to be a contestant on the CBC show.

And that’s precisely the allure of Battle of the Blades: there’s nothing quite like watching a professional hockey player who is fully capable of breaking your neck on a bodycheck into the boards attempt to flawlessly perform something as finesse-oriented as figure skating. The show gains further publicity by placing prominent sports celebrities like figure skating legend Kurt Browning and former NHL dynamo Jeremy Roenick on the show’s judging panel.

However, some hard core hockey fans might reject such a spectacle on the basis that it ruins the traditional image of the bruiser hockey player — kind of like how major hip-hop fans view rapper Ice Cube’s involvement in Disney and family movies a sellout move in relation to his projected image as a thug. Other people who fall into this category of a decided dislike against the show may not realize how difficult and athletically challenging figure skating is and likely haven’t the open mind to transcend the rigid sexist stereotypes which characterizes figure skating as a girl’s sport.

But even so, Battle of the Blades serves a larger purpose in the sense that all of its competitors are skating for charities they chose themselves. When the season culminates, the winning pair will achieve a cash prize of $100,000 for their selected charity.

“I don’t take it too seriously— I don’t want to stand in the corner in a chicken suit to raise money for a charity I believe in, but I don’t mind going out there a bit and being involved in doing things for the right reasons,” commented Chase, who is nobly skating for the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan.

CBC automatically gave the pair $25,000 for Chase and Ina’s charity choice in the Children’s Hospital Foundation. Chase wasn’t able to provide an exact total figure of the pair’s charity earnings, but the figure should exceed $50,000, even if they don’t manage to win the show.

“We had an opportunity to do something that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and also help a bunch of people while we were at it,” added the 43-year-old aspiring figure skater.

“We have a choreographer and a coach so Kyoko has been with me most — all of the time — since August. There’s three different people who are a part of it and we all kind of put our heads together and find out what I can and can’t do. And try and work on the things I don’t do real well but they think I can do.”

Chase, who resides in St. Louis with his family where is he is very involved with the Blues working as a sports analyst, decided to take his skating partner Ina into his family’s home so that the two could be in close proximity while training for the show.

“Kind of the way we are being from Saskatchewan,” added Chase on the topic of his family’s hospitable nature the skating pair’s living arrangements.

Chase and Ina avoided elimination in Battle of the Blades most recent episode on Nov. 8 and 9 in Toronto. Season One defending champion Jamie Sale and her partner, the ever-controversial Theo Fleury, succumbed to the eliminating blow dealt by the judges in the skate-off.

Chase will again contend for figure skating glory on Battle of the Blades on Nov. 14 and 15 against the three remaining pairs Isabelle Basseur and Todd Warriner, Valeri Bure and Ekaterina Gordeeva and Patrice Brisebois and Shae-Lynn Bourne.

The $100,000 prize will be awarded by CBC on the show’s final episode on Nov. 22.