Kelly Chase was the enforcer on those 1990s St. Louis Blues teams, which meant he usually knew in advance when his night was about to get complicated. Before one game against Chicago, captain Garth Butcher told him not to worry about Stu Grimson, because he’d be handling that himself.
Butcher then spent the warmup making sure the Blackhawks enforcer was as wound up as possible.
Speaking on the Ice Guardians Podcast with Butcher sitting beside him, Chase described watching it unfold and realising where it was heading.
“Butcher starts giving it to him and I’m looking at him, I’m thinking, ‘Jesus, Butch, don’t wind him up,'” Chase said. “Grimmer’s big into the faith. Butcher goes, ‘You can’t be a born-again Christian,’ and Grimson says, ‘Butchie, shut your mouth.’ Butcher responds, ‘You can’t be. There’s no pictures in the bible. You can’t read.'”
That wasn’t the end of it. Butcher moved on to Grimson’s parents.
“Butcher just starts giving it to him. ‘Hey, did you ever think your parents named you Stu because they weren’t smart enough to spell stupid?'” Chase said. “The stuff that was coming out of your mouth. I was like, ‘Oh my God.'”
Did Garth Butcher fight Stu Grimson?
He did not. For all the effort Butcher put into provoking a fight, the two never dropped the gloves that night. Somebody had to answer for it, though, and it wasn’t the captain.
“And then I ended up having to fight him once,” Chase said.
READ MORE: How to watch the St. Louis Blues in 2026-27
Butcher, for his part, has never pretended the antagonism was accidental. On the same episode, alongside Chase and Brett Hull, he explained that being despised in opposing rinks was the entire point.
“Fans hated me and I took a lot of pride in the fans hating me in every visit,” Butcher said. “When I was in junior all the way through pro. And it was like, ‘I don’t think they hate me enough here. What am I going to do? I got to do something special tonight.'”
Chase, who looks back fondly on playing alongside him, spent his career doing exactly the job that arrangement required.
Read more:
