- Joined
- Mar 23, 2014
As if Kaetlyn hasn't been ridiculously overscored at Skate Canada this season lol
Top ladies want to avoid SkCan, CoR, and SkAm unless they are from those countries (probably not so much SkAm anymore, since all the US ladies are very beatable by the top Canadian, Russian, and Japanese ladies).
Top pairs from other countries want to avoid SkCan, CoR, and CoC - though without D/R, SkCan will be much more open.
No top ice dancers not from Russia want to go to CoR.
NHK is really safe for pairs and ice dancers, less safe for men and ladies. The overscoring of Japanese men and ladies isn't so bad, but the fields will always be super stacked (but Japanese crowds are great so people still like to go). CoC is usually weaker overall because skaters don't like going there. IIRC, Jenny Kirk said you can tell when a US lady is out of favor with the federation, because they'll be sent to CoR or CoC.
TdF seems like one of the fairest fields overall, and the (over)scoring of European skaters isn't as high as it is at CoR. Sure, someone who actually has a chance of beating P/C won't want to go there, but that doesn't seem really relevant next season. Now that J/C have really broken through, we will probably see their closest competition try to avoid this though?
Without Patrick, SkCan will be a very friendly competition for all the men. None of the top men will want to go to SkAm though, where the scoring for Nathan will be huge.
All of this is to say that top contenders all have "good" GPs and "bad" GPs - for most of them, it all shakes out pretty evenly at the end, especially among the top seeds. As usual, skaters from small feds have a harder time, but there's still always "friendly" competitions for them. For many years, CoR was a very friendly GP for Carolina Kostner, for example, because the Russian ladies were weak at the time. Similarly, CoR was very good to Javi for years.