Kelly Chase was an okay junior player, but it wasn’t enough for him to get drafted into the NHL. And who could blame them? Everyone, especially those days, loved tough players, but Chase’s 343 penalty minutes in the Major Junior Hockey with the Saskatoon Blades was perhaps a bit too much.
A year after every NHL team passed on him, St. Louis Blues took a shot at him, and what a decision that would turn out to be. Chase played a tough, physical game, and not long after signing with the Blues, he had an enforcer reputation, which earned him respect from the Blues fanbase.
Chase wasn’t just a Blue on the ice. He was a great ambassador for St. Louis, and he loved the city. In 2008, he was presented with the Jack Buck Award for his enthusiasm and dedication to sports in the city of St. Louis.
But not everyone Chase met in St. Louis was nice.
One time, a patron wouldn’t leave him alone at a bar, leading to him beating up a guy with a prosthetic leg.
”During the lockout of 2004-05, there was a fan who was questioning the toughness of Tkachuk and Chase,” Jimmy O’Brien said in Jeremy Rutherford’s book 100 Things Blues Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.
”He kept jabbing them and poking them in the side. They didn’t pay much attention to him, but he kept pestering, telling them that neither one of them was that tough. Finally they told him if he jabbed them one more time that he was going to get it. He persisted on, so Chaser turned around and gave him a two-handed shove. The guy slid across the floor, hit the rug, and the guy’s prosthetic leg fell off.”
”Chaser left all disgusted. He called me back on the phone and said, ’Please tell me that guy that I just pushed did not have a prosthetic leg.’ I told him that he did and he was still trying to strap it back on.”
