© Provided by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited Retired NHL player Sheldon Kennedy and ice dance champion Kaitlyn Weaver are teaming up on Battle of the Blades. ![Sexual Sexual](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qOnwg5QOk04/UrsU0g6xFBI/AAAAAAABFu8/ehzWH2GwDys/s1600/hermann+goering+tiger+lion+cub+baby+child+children+luftwaffe+5+April+1936.jpg)
![Russian Sexual Battle On Ice (2000) Russian Sexual Battle On Ice (2000)](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125716208/982472899.jpg)
When Sheldon Kennedy was growing up, his favourite sound in the world was a skate blade gliding on fresh ice.
Juneau news, arts, public affairs, and national news from KTOO - Juneau's own non-profit news source. Sexual assault, and other violent crimes. More than 2,000 Fort Wainwright soldiers to. Absent any impurity in the water, it'll just get really, really cold. Below freezing, in fact, but without any actual ice formation. All it will need is a shock or impurity to crystallize suddenly. And so yes, in theory, a Russian lake could flash-freeze should horses abruptly plunge into it source: Radiolab.
But Kennedy lost his love of skating after he was sexually abused by his junior hockey coach — he didn’t love it even during his eight-year NHL career.
Battle of the Blades has given that love back to him.
“It’s a huge gift,” Kennedy said during an interview Monday. At 50, 22 years after he last played in the NHL, Blades has allowed him to “experience the joy of skating again,” he said.
Kennedy is one of seven hockey players partnering with figure skaters to compete on the CBC show.
The reality series was a big hit for the public broadcaster between 2009 and 2013, averaging a million-plus viewers per episode, and it returns for a fifth season Thursday.
Ask the contestants why they joined (or in some cases rejoined) Battle of the Blades and they’ll tell you they wanted to challenge themselves and get out of their comfort zones. Each team is also competing for a $100,000 donation to charity, and some of them have very personal connections to the charities they’ve chosen.
Former Boston Bruin P.J. Stock — a late addition to the cast after Colby Armstrong was injured during training — is raising money for the ALS Society of Quebec after losing a brother to the disease.
American pairs skater Amanda Evora, who won Blades in Season 4, is representing Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada in honour of a close family friend who died just a week after she got the call to rejoin the show.
Russian pairs skating legend Ekaterina Gordeeva is supporting the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Her late husband and skating partner Sergei Grinkov died of a heart attack in 1995.
Kennedy’s story is particularly well known to Canadians. The Manitoba native, who played for the Bruins, Detroit Red Wings and Calgary Flames, came forward in 1996 to accuse his former junior coach Graham James of sexual abuse. James served jail sentences for the assaults on Kennedy and five other junior hockey players. He was paroled in 2016.
But it’s not the past that Kennedy wants to emphasize during his time on Blades — it’s hope.
“You know, it doesn’t matter how dark a place you’re coming from. There’s a way to get to this place where you can smile, have fun and enjoy it. And that’s what we want to bring to this: joy,” Kennedy said, speaking of himself and partner Kaitlyn Weaver, a Canadian and world ice-dance champion.
“I mean, in a way, I needed this in my life,” he added. “I was burnt out … I needed something to just focus on and keep it simple.”
Not everyone said yes right away. Amanda Kessel, one of two female hockey players this season and the sister of former Maple Leaf Phil, said no, but reconsidered after a talk with her agent. So did former New York Islander Bruno Gervais until his wife pushed him. Stock’s four children convinced him to ride to the rescue of Season 2 partner Violetta Afanasieva after Armstrong’s injury.
For all of the competitors, things got real in mid-August with a boot camp in Mississauga. It gave the figure skaters a chance to size up the hockey players and the hockey players a first taste of skating with picks on the toes of their boots.
“As the … tough guys know, it’s easier to pick a fight than to fight the picks,” quipped Ron MacLean, who returns to the series as host.
He, head judge Kurt Browning and all seven teams were on the ice at the William P. Wilder Arena at Upper Canada College on Monday. Each team took a spin and showed off a lift or other trick before sitting down for media interviews. It was impressive considering that most started working together just three weeks before the meet and greet.
“I couldn’t lift my feet off the ice, like, it was really scary with the toe picks,” recalled Olympic hockey champ Natalie Spooner of her first day practising with ice dance medallist Andrew Poje. “It’s been so much fun. I mean, I feel like a little kid again,” she added.
![Sexual Sexual](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qOnwg5QOk04/UrsU0g6xFBI/AAAAAAABFu8/ehzWH2GwDys/s1600/hermann+goering+tiger+lion+cub+baby+child+children+luftwaffe+5+April+1936.jpg)
Some have been particularly ambitious.
Gervais practised “death spirals” with Gordeeva their first time out. He even signed them up for hip-hop classes so he could get used to skating to a count.
“And then I got on Google and I realized who I was doing a death spiral with, with barely any experience. I got scared after,” Gervais laughed, comparing skating with Gordeeva to being on the centre line with Wayne Gretzky.
Vanessa James, a Toronto-born French pairs champion, at first thought partner Brian McGrattan looked scary, particularly after learning he’d been an enforcer for the Ottawa Senators, “but as soon as he started talking and smiling he was like a big teddy bear.”
McGrattan even skated hand in hand with his former sparring partner Colton Orr, a former New York Ranger and Maple Leaf.
“Who would have thought we (would go) from punching each other in the face to competing in a figure-skating competition against each other?” Orr said.
Among the challenges for the hockey players, besides the toe picks, are learning to skate to music, learning choreography, maintaining proper posture (shoulders down, legs straight) and remembering to smile as they skate.
“In a period of three weeks, they’ve learned what most people will be taught in months,” James said.
But there are challenges for the figure skaters as well. MacLean said the female skaters have to be especially strong to lead their hockey player partners (besides, obviously, trusting they won’t get dropped on their heads). Browning said there are also dangers for the male figure skaters “when you get a heavier girl than you’re used to lifting up there and then she doesn’t know how to contain herself.”
The biggest challenge will come Thursday when the contestants hit the ice at Hamilton’s FirstOntario Centre in front of a live audience. (Only six teams will compete. Stock and Afanasieva will compete next week since they had less time to practise.)
Gervais figures the crowd, the lights, the cameras and the lack of boards around the rink will be a distraction at first, but it will be like “a playoff game where the building is packed … I think it’s gonna be the same mentality.”
![Russian Sexual Battle On Ice (2000) Russian Sexual Battle On Ice (2000)](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125716208/982472899.jpg)
Battle of the Blades Season 5 debuts Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem. See cbc.ca for a full list of the skaters and the charities they’re supporting, as well as a guide to getting tickets.
Debra Yeo is a deputy entertainment editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo