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Huge posters of the star skaters festoon the atrium of the CBC's Toronto headquarters, hung from the upper floors like Stanley Cup banners.

Craig Simpson and Jamie Salé, the newly minted winners of Battle of the Blades , the public broadcaster's hit reality competition, glide into the open space. Heads turn. A small crowd gathers. Several people approach to offer congratulations. Both turn to smile and acknowledge the well-wishers.

“It's bigger than my Olympic win,” the figure skater, Ms. Salé, says half-joking. She and her husband and skating partner, David Pelletier, won Olympic Gold in pairs figure skating in 2002. “It feels like it anyway.”

They are often stopped on the street, the retired hockey player, Mr. Simpson, adds. “It's huge,” says the two-time Stanley Cup winner, shaking his perfect crew cut. He hasn't played professional or recreational hockey for 15 years, since back injuries forced him to retire at the age of 28. In recent years, his closest proximity to centre ice has been as a Hockey Night in Canada commentator.

The pair talk about their ice-dancing win on Monday night with breathless camaraderie, contributing to the aw-shucks buzz in the air.

Here at centre ice of the CBC, there is a palpable thaw. This time, the public broadcaster won the face-off with its many critics, who have been having a field day with The National 's revamped standing-room-only news format.

It's a wonder employees aren't leaning over those open atrium balconies and shouting, “Woo-hoo! We have a hit!” Battle of the Blades defied its critics with high ratings, after all: averaging 1.7 million viewers a week. If American culture found its perfect reflection in their hit reality series, The Biggest Los er , well, ha, Canada has its own! The northern nation knows ice the way Americans know spare tires.

Swap the boring blue blazer of venerable hockey commentator Ron MacLean for a velvet-looking smoking jacket, and voilà ! a new kind of class comes to the rink. Hire hockey legends Lanny McDonald and Doug Gilmour as some of the judges, and let them become puddles of gushing sentimentality and congratulations.

Wring not your hands about hockey brutes, the series seemed to say to us. They are gentle giants if you give them a silky shirt with subtle sequins and a girl to twirl like a hockey stick. Who knew that their meaty, gloveless paws could hold a delicate hand, a slender waist, so gracefully?

And the winning pair fit perfectly into the broadcaster's idea of what airwave-Canada should be: wholesome, family-friendly, polite, open as the Prairie sky, which happens to be where both winners are from.

“Hockey player doesn't define anything about me,” says Mr. Simpson, 42, whose smile is so perfect and white he could sell toothpaste. The un-macho aspect of ice dancing never fazed him. “Who you are as a man is defined by how you treat people. I'm a man. I'm a husband. I'm a father.” The father of three beams through his chewing gum.

“We really had to bring another side out of the guys,” says Ms. Salé, whose husband worked as a coach on the Blades series. “I know Craig,” she says, looking over at him. The two were acquaintances for many years through their families, because both are members of the same Edmonton sports club. “He knows who he is, and we just brought that to the ice. That was his strength. He's funny. He's charismatic. He's tender.”

“The biggest challenge going in was to explore that part of myself publicly,” Mr. Simpson admits.

“He had no choice with me,” Ms. Salé cracks. A petite 32-year-old mother of one, she epitomizes our picture of the figure-skater persona: the perky girl next door who likes to feel the wind in her hair.

“That first week we did our routine, I never looked at anyone in the crowd,” Mr. Simpson offers as the two fall into an easy conversation with each other. “I could have been skating as I do when I am a hockey player. You may look at a good-looking girl in the stands or your wife, but mostly you don't. But don't say that …” he says, placing his paw over the tape recorder, seemingly concerned that he might appear unwholesome.

“No, no, I like that,” Ms. Sale says, laughing.

“You're just doing your job as a hockey player,” Mr. Simpson continues with a shrug. “[But] I watched Jamie, and she waved to everyone, and the next week, I thought, ‘If I'm gonna do this, I got to engage the audience.' That was a step off the ledge for me. You got to start being a showman. That was empowering me.”

Ms. Salé was fearless in letting him lift and spin her. “We wanted to make him comfortable being a figure skater,” she says of the training she and her husband gave Mr. Simpson. “Where he needs to be on the circle skating with me, how he needs to grip my hand. It's a science.”

They had only four weeks of training in Edmonton before coming to do the show in Toronto, where every week, if not eliminated, the teams had three days to perfect their next routine.

“Three days, that's unbelievable!” Ms. Salé exlaims. “I was nervous. But he was a sponge!” she says, pointing a nail-polished finger at Mr. Simpson. “He said, ‘Show me more!' We had to hold him back. Because we never wanted to put him at risk.”

“It was better being a neophyte,” says Mr. Simpson, who suffered from back pain and other injuries during the series. “My mind was an open book.”

But responsibility was always paramount, he quickly points out. “I watched Dave, and I would go to him and say, ‘Tell me the danger spot there and if I feel that, how do I get out of it?' She fell once on me,” he says, looking over at his skating partner. “I almost separated my shoulder.”

“But he saved me,” says Ms. Salé, smiling sweetly like a damsel in faux distress.

“I saved her,” he repeats proudly.

The two beam at each other again. “It's teamwork,” Mr. Simpson gushes. Each wasn't sure of the idea when first approached about it. “But you don't get into something and do it halfway,” he asserts.

“And there's nothing cheesy about the show,” Ms. Salé puts in.

“We were a family,” he adds, all doe-eyed.