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Marie-France Dubreuil and Stephane Richer on Battle of the Blades. (courtesy of CBC)

By Lois Elfman, special to icenetwork.com

(11/05/2009) - The first time Stéphane Richer got on the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens (in 1984) he was given strict instructions to bring his game face. Twenty-five years later, he's back at center ice, but the directions are a little different.

"When I started my hockey career, I remember my first game in Toronto. It was 'Hockey Night' in Canada. I was told I need my game face. I need to be tough. I need to be sure I'm ready because of the rivalry between Montreal and Toronto," said Richer, who played in the NHL for 21 years. Now he's partnering five-time Canadian ice dance champion, two-time world silver medalist Marie-France Dubreuil on Battle of the Blades.

"Now I go into Maple Leaf Gardens and I have to be gentle, sexy and sensual," he joked. "That's the way opposite. I walk in with my little bag with my figure skates."

Dubreuil, who usually skates with partner/husband Patrice Lauzon, said she thinks Richer is doing incredibly well for a guy who's 6-foot-3 and about 240 pounds. Lauzon has been working with his wife and her temporary partner for coaching and choreography.

"For me, the process is not to turn him into a figure skater," Dubreuil said. "That was our strategy because he's so big and I don't think he would feel comfortable or feel in his element to try to figure skate. So what we did is that we looked at his abilities. He always had the reputation of being a really good skater as a hockey player. Very powerful skater and he has a good glide. We tried to work around his qualities and do a couple of fixes and show him a couple of steps, so I could adapt my skating to his skating. That's how we went about it."

They landed in the bottom two the first two weeks of the show, but each time won the skate-off. They survived another skate-off last week.

"I guess we love the pressure," Richer said. "It's a running gag now, Monday nights are the Marie-France and Stéphane special invitational."

Richer has made the transition from hockey skates to figure skates and said he's come to appreciate the function of the toe pick. He readily acknowledges that fellow competitor Craig Simpson, who's partnered with Jamie Salé, has definitely achieved a more complete figure skating package than he has, but Richer is proud of his lifts.

It wasn't easy to feel comfortable lifting Dubreuil, as the week before the first show she fell from a lift and hit her head. On the first show they unintentionally left a lift out of their program because Richer froze.

"He was scared to drop me again," Dubreuil said. "Once he mentally got past that stage we really started to have fun and do innovative lifts. That was the turn around for him, when I said, 'Stop being afraid of making a mistake or dropping me.'"

Dubreuil is not only excited to be in a TV show that features skaters she grew up watching -- like Barbara Underhill, Christine Hough-Sweeney and Isabelle Brasseur-but she's excited that young skaters are getting to see these women in action.

"Skating with the new system, a lot of skating has become athletic and technical," Dubreuil noted. "These girls that were performing in the 80s and 90s had a different quality of interpretation of music. I'm happy the new generation of skaters is seeing these girls perform. They're very inspiring to me."

Dubreuil and Richer have chosen to represent the same charity, the MA Foundation, a small foundation based in Quebec that has the motto "For a childhood without violence." They work with children under the age of 10 that have been victims of physical, mental and sexual abuse, taking care of families and giving them support and treatment.

Although Richer has his own foundation and every year stages a charity golf tournament, he felt it was important to utilize the platform of a high profile show like Battle of the Blades to help promote a small organization that could really use the exposure.

"If we can help a family or if we can save a kid's life or maybe bring a smile or happiness, I think we've done well," he said. "Every time we're on the ice, Marie and I are always talking about that." Each skater gets $12,500 to give to a charity. The winning team gets to make a $100,000 donation.

On this Sunday's show, the remaining three teams-Dubreuil and Richer, Salé and Simpson and Shae-Lynn Bourne and Claude Lemieux -- will each perform two programs. One will be set to music by a Canadian musical artist or group and the other is a repeat of a previous favorite program.

Battle of the Blades has been a big hit, so it's likely CBC will stage it again next year. Richer said he'd definitely recommend it to his former teammates, just as long as they understand the time and physical commitment required. While he's really proud to be in the final three and hopes to make the final, he does have one request for the producers: "Please don't call me back for next year."