OTTAWA - Canada's Patrick Chan stood atop the podium, held aloft his gold medal and pointed around to the fans at the Scotiabank Place, a wide grin stretched across his face.
  
Bolstered by the hometown crowd, the young Ottawa native defeated a pair of American veterans and overcame a technically shaky long program to capture the men's title at HomeSense Skate Canada International on Saturday in his season debut.

"Speechless," Chan said afterward. "Really lucky."

"I was just thanking them for still supporting me, especially after Jeff (Buttle, Canada's reigning world champion) retired, supporting me even though I didn't have the best skate. They seemed to enjoy the program and that's what I came here to do, show them the new program and hope that they enjoyed it."

The 17-year-old, who lives and trains in Toronto, was in second place after Friday's short program, and skated just the third-best long program, but it was good enough for gold, thanks to a strong artistic performance, and some less-than-perfect results from his competitors.

"I said down in the kiss and cry, cats have nine lives and I just used one, or I used one of my lifelines," Chan said.

"I'm happy, but I'm kind of disappointed, I didn't really want it to come down like this, I wanted it to be a good ending like nationals, especially on home turf. But it's still early, I just have to keep reminding myself."

Chan won with a score of 215.45, while American Ryan Bradley moved up from third to finish second with 212.75, and U.S. teammate Evan Lysacek, who struggled to a fourth-place on Friday, wound up third with 209.27.

Earlier in the day, Canadians Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison won silver in the pairs competition.

Chan, who upset world champion Buttle at last year's Canadian championships, skated a fluid performance to Rachmaninov, scoring high on his artistic performance with a maturity that belies his age.

"It's really interesting here to see little Patrick whooping us," the 24-year-old Bradley said.

"But he's a super-talented kid, he goes out there and he just looks like he's supposed to be out there on the ice, just everything looks so natural. That's hard to compete with. That's what makes the sport so cool is there's so many different styles."

"Yesterday we were in the locker-room and talking about our age, and (Chan) said he's 17 and I said, 'get out of here,"' Lysacek said laughing. "It's funny."

With Buttle's retirement in September, the men's skating spotlight in Canada heading into the 2010 Vancouver Olympics has shifted squarely on Chan, whether "the whippersnapper" -- as one veteran journalist addressed him -- is ready for it or not.

He insists he can handle the pressure, and said Canadian events such as this week's provide the perfect opportunity for practice.

"Here was a bit of a taste of it," Chan said. "There were a lot more cameras and people wanting to talk to me, more than usual, especially now that Jeff isn't here, he usually took most of it so I didn't have to worry much about it."

Chan's performance was far from perfect technically, with a fall on a triple Axel, and a slip on a jump combination.

But his coach Don Laws said the young skater, who rounds out his training program with everything from yoga and pilates to sitting in an ice bath, has plenty of room for improvement.

In one of the practice sessions earlier in the week, Chan landed a quad toe loop, and Laws said the skater might add a quad to his repertoire for his next Grand Prix appearance two weeks from now in France.

"We're being careful, I don't want to get him injured," Laws said, on introducing the quad.

Shawn Sawyer of Edmunston, N.B., who was seventh in Friday's short program, was one of the surprises of the night, winning the long program with a score of 142.36 and finishing fifth overall with 205.56.

"When the score came out I couldn't believe I could get that score with that program," Sawyer said.

In the pairs, Dube, from Drummondville, Que., and Davison, from Cambridge, Ont., who were third after Friday's short program, showed a new, edgy side in their performance to "Carmen" to win the free skate and finish second with 176.54 points.

"We wanted to see going into the Olympics what kind of programs would suit us the best, and if something aggressive would be good for us," Davison said.

"We really like the program, it's really fun to work on, and it's interesting for us because we're seen as a classical, romantic team and it's fun to skate outside of our box."

The Canadians scored 116.40 to win the free skate. Russians Yuko Kawaguchi and Alexander Smirnov scored 111.95 on the free skate and 176.97 overall to narrowly beat the Canadians for gold and capture their first Grand Prix title.

"That certainly was close," Davison said. "We were really proud about how we came out and attacked that long really well, stayed in the character of the program better than we thought we would almost, and to be honest, that was a better long than we were expecting."

Americans Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker were third with 161.51 points, scoring 100.85 in a long program marked by several significant errors.

Dube, 21, and Davison, 22, had just one error in the catch of the triple twist, a manoeuvre where the male skater throws up the female parallel to the ice and catches her, and a move the Canadians have just added to their arsenal this season in an effort to move up the podium.

"Of course, the twist, the catch. . . everyone knows, we can't try and hide it," Davison said, laughing. "Other than that, we felt really confident and smooth out there."

McLaughlin and Kawaguchi had a frightening collision in the warmup that prompted a gasp from the Scotiabank Place crowd and sent both skaters crashing to the ice.

"I think I was a little shaken up, my back hurt a little bit," McLaughlin said. "I tried to block it out and focus really hard for my long program. I don't like to blame any outside factors for what happened today."

Canadians Vanessa Crone and Paul Poirier had the third-best score in the original dance to leave them fifth overall.

Crone, from Aurora, Ont., and Poirier, from Unionville, Ont., scored 49.13 for their Ragtime performance and have 80.24 points overall.

"We were really happy with the way we performed the program in terms of interpretation and speed and bigness of movement," Poirier said. "And we think it really reflected in the program component score, so we're still happy with the performance."

Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White had the best original dance to retain the overall lead with 90.65 points. Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat of France were sixth in the original dance but are in second overall with 81.27, while Americans Kimberly Navarro and Brent Bommentre, fourth in Saturday's program, are third with 80.35.

Andrea Chong of Toronto and Montreal Guillaume Gfeller are eighth with 69.53 points.