Ok, this is my first crack at doing a preview for a figure skating event. I did some research on the web to get the numbers, but the rest is mostly opinion, haha!
Let's take a look at the Men's field at the upcoming Canadian Championship. One of the major contenders, Jeremy Ten, has withdrawn because he just had surgery on his ankle, so that waters down the competition a little bit. I was actually looking forward to seeing him.
I took the starting order from the Skate Canada website and assumed it was reverse ordered by some kind of ranking and took a look at the top 7 in the field. Then I looked up some of their scores over this season to estimate their seasons' bests for the year. Since I didn't look up every possible competition it's possible that I've missed some better score, so I don't guarantee that this list is accurate, but it should give us an idea.
'Rank' Skater Best total score this season that I found
1 Patrick Chan 259.75 (at the GP Final)
2 Kevin Reynolds 218.65 (at Skate Canada)
3 Shawn Sawyer 193.80 (At NHK Trophy)
4 Andrei Rogozine 188.60 (At JGP SBC Cup)
5 Ian Martinez 194.71 (At East/West Challenge Qualifier)
6 Marc-Andre Craig 193.19 (At East/West Challenge Qualifer)
7 Joey Russell 186.37 (At Nebelhorn Trophy)
Obviously Patrick Chan should have no trouble winning this one unless he has an injury or a total meltdown. This GP season showed that he can fall at least 3 times and still win because he will always get high component scores.
Kevin Reynolds may represent the biggest challenge for Chan. Reynolds actually outscored Chan in the SP at Skate Canada by landing two quads. But Reynolds tends to get low component scores and he was hurt with downgrades in the rest of his GP programs as far as I can tell. He lacks the polish that is required to do well on the GP circuit but chances are good that if he skates clean without downgrades he could come away with the silver.
Don't count out Shawn Sawyer though. While his season's best total score of the year is over 25 points below Reynolds', we all know that he is capable of so much more. If you combine his best SP of this year and personal best LP, it comes in at a respectable 214.13. His FS this year is really cool and he's a wonderful performer so he should make things interesting in the battle for silver. Watch for his unique upright split position spin, it should make you say 'OW!'
Andrei Rogozine is coming off a successful season on the Junior GP. He won two events and was third in the final. He was Canadian Junior champion in 2009 and was 11th at last year's Canadian Championship in his Senior debut. I'm not really an expert here but I doubt that the judges will really give him top-notch scores because he's been at the Senior level for such a short time. But it's figure skating, so anything can happen!
Unfortunately I don't know too much about the other three but Martinez and Craig seem to have a good rivalry going based on their results from the qualifying events and are the highest-ranked competitors that did not get a bye, And Russell's Nebelhorn performances featured errors, so he's probably capable of achieving a higher score than what's listed above.
So, to do them justice I'll take a look at Martinez' and Craig's performances from East/West Challenge along with any of the other top qualifiers and see how they did.
All in all it should be an exciting competition and I'm looking forward to seeing quads and triple-triple combinations in person for the first time!
UPDATE: I took a look at Martinez and Craig, as promised. Wow, don't miss Ian Martinez! He's got personality and really brings it to his footwork, I think the crowd will like him. Unfortunately I thought Marc-Andre Craig seemed really robotic and expressionless by comparison especially in his short. But to give him credit his long is a little more interesting, there's a bit of pantomime here and there which doesn't do a lot for me but it's better than his short. Craig gets better PCS scores than Martinez though especially in the long so I guess the judges like him. On the plus side he skates really fast and has big jumps and fast spins. Side note: Russell has fun footwork but pretty awful camel spins. Somehow he still got positive GOE on those camel spins though, huh. I'll never understand the judging in this sport.
UPDATE 2: Somehow the formatting on that table isn't working out, ugh.
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