Battle of the Blades is a new show on Canadian television which pairs professional hockey players with ex-figure skaters and pits them against each other in a skating competition.

Sound familiar?  Well, you’re either thinking of the awesome 1990s film The Cutting Edge, or of the one-season reality tv dud Skating with Celebrities, which tried to make bank off of the Dancing with the Stars concept only to fail miserably because, while every human being has the basics of dance down - walking - not very many people can strap on a pair of skates and make it around an ice rink without falling or looking wobbly.  The show basically consisted of a series of cringe worthy moments as we prayed that the guy who played Joey Gladstone on Full House wouldn’t fall down and crack his skull open (actually, he was one of the better ones because of his hockey background, he’s just the only “celebrity” on that show I can remember off the top of my head and I’m too lazy to do the cursory internet research to find out the others.  Even though it’s now taken me longer to type out these two sentences than it would have taken me to look it up.)

Regardless, I digress; the previous show didn’t work before because of lack of skating skills.  This one fixes this problem by making the partners all professional hockey players.  It’s apparently doing well in Canada, where there are a lot of hockey fans.  Would it attract enough of a fan base here in the US?  Possibly in certain parts of the country, but unlikely.

I was pretty excited when I heard the concept (thanks to my roommate, Jeff, for sending me this link) but the actual clips didn’t excite me that much.  Why?  As much fun showmanship as there is, peppered in with a bout of athleticism (via a lift), there’s not much actual figure skating.  The guys are forced - in some numbers - to wear figure skates (“Toe Pick!”) but from what I saw they didn’t have to do any jumps, spins, spirals, or actual step sequences.  So basically they’re dancing on ice.  Sure, that takes the guys out of their masculinity comfort zones, but I would have loved to see them trying to learn toe loops and sit spins, as well.  Because isn’t that why most of us watch skating to begin with?

That being said, I’ve only watched the 4 or so clips linked to in the article.  Apparently full episodes are available online here.  Good to know I have a new excuse to get out of doing my homework…