Canadian Men 2018-19 season news & updates

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kwanfan1818

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I just hope Gogolev can go back, train up the senior program, and treat Nationals like another competition on the way to Jr. Worlds. He's had enough of a roller-coaster of a JGP season!
 

RoseRed

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Agree with your analysis of Asher.

I was thinking the opposite for Gogolev. I do think he was graded correctly with PCS in low 7s in Vancouver. What I'm expecting at nationals is mid to high 7s in PCS if she skates well. Add in another element and if he cleans up his URs and lands the lutz, I would say 170 is possible in the long with mid 80s in the short if he's mostly clean. If all skate well the only guy who can beat that is Keegan; Gogolev would be neck and neck with (or slightly ahead of) Nam. The rest would fall somewhere behind.
He had 87.62 in the SP at sectionals with 4S-3T, 3Lz, 3A. 154.13 in the FS with 1Lz and 3T to open. His JW skate was a bit stronger than that. If you take the value he got for the ChSq at Sectionals (3 BV + 1.2 GOE) and add it to his JW scores, you get 158.96.

Stephen can get 245+ with mistakes in the FS with his international PCS. So I agree with you. If Stephen skates well, he's on the podium for sure. And he could win. I'd prefer he doesn't, but I do want him to podium because I want him to skate well, which would equal podium at Nationals.
 

Erin

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Yeah, I don’t think that Phan and Orzel have been up to Stephen’s level so it seems pretty clear that Stephen should go to Jr Worlds and the only question is who should join him. And in my view, Orzel should have the inside track for the second spot although I expect they will just go by nationals results.

I also wouldn’t describe Stephen’s season as a roller coaster. I think he has had a really good season, with one off performance in Richmond. He was great at 3 other important events (Ontario Sectionals, JGPF and his first JGP) and did well in his pre-season too. No need to overstate one bad skate.
 

Colonel Green

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Yeah, I don’t think that Phan and Orzel have been up to Stephen’s level so it seems pretty clear that Stephen should go to Jr Worlds and the only question is who should join him. And in my view, Orzel should have the inside track for the second spot although I expect they will just go by nationals results.
I would definitely send Orzel. The only thing Phan has over him this season is the JGP bronze, and that came down completely to the fields they skated in.
 

kwanfan1818

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Gogolev was hyped as the favorite to be JGPF champion before the GP series started, was crowned JGPF champion after he won Slovakia, had a weak JGP at a home JGP that was meant to be his march of triumph into the top seed based on combined score, did not make JGP initially and only did when another skater withdrew, and then competed JGPF in the same city of his most difficult program and against the podium from that event. I don't think I'm overstating the case, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
 

Erin

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I would definitely send Orzel. The only thing Phan has over him this season is the JGP bronze, and that came down completely to the fields they skated in.

Yeah, Conrad scored higher in his 4th place (212) than Joseph did in his 3rd place (207) and also beat Joseph head to head by over 20 points at Challenge. But I also think that if Joseph came back at Canadians and beat Conrad, the more recent result sometimes carries a lot of weight. In my view, I'd send Conrad unless he has a really bad Canadians.
 

barbarafan

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Gogolev was hyped as the favorite to be JGPF champion before the GP series started, was crowned JGPF champion after he won Slovakia, had a weak JGP at a home JGP that was meant to be his march of triumph into the top seed based on combined score, did not make JGP initially and only did when another skater withdrew, and then competed JGPF in the same city of his most difficult program and against the podium from that event. I don't think I'm overstating the case, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

He was not hyped prior to GP. He was a dark horse with everyone backing off to give him time to grow. Sometimes he was not allowed to jump for a few weeks when in the middle of a spurt and hurting. If a competition had come up and his body was not doing well he would have been withdrawn.His parents and coaching staff totally put his health and developement first and the hype is that he could be a great skater in the future as long as he does not train or compete stupid therefore becoming injured or having bone and joint weaknesses. His only goal for his first JGP was to land the quad lutz in competition. Done. After his win and all the hype it generated the pressure was a lot for 2nd JGP and it got away from him a bit. He went into the final wanting 2 stay in the moment and improve his overrall performance.Done. He will compete as a senior for the 2nd yr and hopefully will go to junior worlds. Finger crossed all goes well but really there is always the possibility that he could shoot up 5 inches in the same month and temporarily lose his jumps and withdraw from JW if he is chosen to go and the same could happen between now and nationals. He will be eligible for JW for years and years and years so just let him be a really talented kid for now.
 

kwanfan1818

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Before he set foot on the ice, because his technical content was so far ahead of his closest competitor. At least in Men. Trusova, with over 90 TES at Jr. Worlds wasn't skating against him.

I'd seen him at Nationals the year before and wasn't buying, however much potential he had. I though a podium finish would be great after qualifying in the bottom half, but he did a lot better than that in the end after turmoil that has done in the heads of skaters with a lot more experience.
 

Colonel Green

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The move to Toronto has, by his own admission, been a struggle to adjust to.

Whether it’s going to work in the long term remains to be seen; if it enables him to be a successful senior, nobody will care that he missed out on the JGP Final one year.
 

Seerek

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I liked Asher a lot as a competitor but he was disappointing for me as a commentator. He's brought in because he has some expertise about ice dance but all he talked about was music, feeling and star factor. Nothing technical, nothing to help viewers understand the sport. (I may also be annoyed that he called Bach elevator music...) Dylan was much better.

Should I have been surprised at PJ Kwong letting Elizabeth Manley effectively talk throughout a huge portion of the singles short and free skates this weekend? That was quite a lot of running commentary - not necessarily incorrect analysis mind you, but sometimes superfluous.
 

Dobre

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Personally, I do not think discussing Gogolev's chances to be a major contender at the junior level this season was hype. I think it was a perfectly logical possibility based on the skills & content that he has. And he proved to be a major contender. Which makes such a conclusion...not hype.

Predicting his entire career based off of his current status would be hype. There has likely been some of it. But predicting an athlete's competitive potential based on the skills they have and the skills exhibited by the larger junior field does not qualify as hype to me. (And if we have learned nothing in the Junior Men's field over the past several seasons, it is that one's potential to be a major contender is not eliminated by one weak event or the failure to qualify for the JGPF).
 

kwanfan1818

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I think it was hype because no one really knew about him as a competitor. People were talking about him being on last year's senior Men's podium, and he was 10th, 20+ points behind Phan.

It was clear he had the potential to become JGPF champion if he landed enough content, but he was also restricted deliberately in the number of quad and 3A attempts he was allowed to do under his training program, which means less muscle memory.

Also, he could grow at any moment, which could throw everything out of whack. Seattle Opera had an extra Miles on hand when they did a two-week run of The Turn of the Screw, just in case both of the two boys cast had their voices change. Adolescence is hard on boys for the duration, even if the end up coming out the other end more successfully.
 

Dobre

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I think it was hype because no one really knew about him as a competitor.

I thought he could do it based on what I saw from him last season. I didn't know he would do it. I simply thought he could.

To me, hype is based on something else. (Wishful thinking. An if statement, like if this athlete just learns this jump or just improves these rotations... A move to a big name coach. A parent with successful skating lineage. A jump shown only on video tape. Etc.)

But I don't think it's hype to see an athlete successfully complete content similar to the current JGP field and say, hey, this athlete could be a contender.

As I said, I'm sure there was some hype. But the fact that the conversation took place prior to the JGP doesn't make it hype to me. I thought Yelim could medal at her first JGP also. She didn't. It took her until her third season. But I still don't think my assessment of her as having the potential to be a medal contender was incorrect. It was a reasonable hypothesis based on her content.
 

Scrufflet

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Should I have been surprised at PJ Kwong letting Elizabeth Manley effectively talk throughout a huge portion of the singles short and free skates this weekend? That was quite a lot of running commentary - not necessarily incorrect analysis mind you, but sometimes superfluous.
I love Liz but agree. I wish she'd cut back the commentary a bit although she had interesting things to say. I think she was really excited to be there. I liked Asher. But I really liked Dylan! He was fabulous! He is such a natural: intelligent, funny, knows when to talk and when to be quiet. MORE please!
 

Ka3sha

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Don’t know where to post..
Elena Vaytsekhovskaya interviewed Patrick Chan at the GPF in Vancouver few weeks ago, the interview was published today

Here’s FS-gossips translation
https://fs-gossips.com/patrick-chan-a-man-cannot-do-badly-what-he-truly-loves/
From the journalist point of view you had a benchmark career ending with an Olympic gold medal won in a team event. But what did you feel when you’ve already decided to finish your career, but haven’t announced it yet?
– If I say that it was easy it’ll be a lie. It was very difficult and scary. Probably, these are normal human feelings when it comes to changing your life forever. For more than 20 years my life could have been described in two words: “Patrick is a figure skater”, and everything else has been all about it. At some point, as I grew older, I began to wonder who am I actually outside the ice? How can my future life develop without figure skating? How to plan it from scratch? Now, when all these worries have subsided, I cannot but admit that I chose a very proper time to leave. Taking into account the current tendencies in men’s single skating, I would have been just swept out of the way if I hadn’t taken this step myself.
It seemed to me that you were pretty close to finishing your career four years ago, when you took a one-year break after the Games in Sochi.
– You don’t even imagine how close. I was absolutely lost after those Games. I just suddenly realized that I can’t do anything else except skating. Then, I began to think about the future, to think what would be interesting to me, could I be happy, could it happen that this new life would fit into the sad wording “Patrick is a former figure skater”? These four years from Sochi to Pyeongchang helped me a lot to figure it out.
There is a version that in 2015 you came back to figure skating just because of the Olympic team event.
– To be honest, in 2015, I didn’t even think about it. I returned to a comfortable zone for myself, where everything was thoroughly known to me: how to train, how to perform, and where every hour of my life was clearly scheduled. Then, naturally, the question arose “Why am I doing all this?” I knew perfectly well that I couldn’t fight for individual medal anymore – I missed that boat in Sochi. And the team event has become an excellent motivation. A very strong one, by the way. I didn’t have such before Sochi.
You said so calmly that I you missed the boat…


– What’s the big deal? When an athlete realizes that he will not be the first, even if he skates the program of his life, it hurts, but actually this is the most valuable experience that sport can give. At this moment you really start to understand what is the most important thing in your life. Medals? Nonsense! Any medal is just a momentary material thing. If you make it the only meaning of your life, then you will be left with nothing, if you don’t win. Even if you win. To have a long life in sport, and so it doesn’t become a torture, you need a completely different motivation, an ability to enjoy even very hard work, an understanding that you skate because you want to, because you love it. And this should be at the forefront. Just a few think about it. You need a certain inner maturity to realize it.
In your sports collection there are three Olympic medals and five more, including three gold ones, from World championships. Which of these awards …
– Is the most memorable?
Not. Brought you, strange as it may sound, the biggest disappointment?
– This is definitely individual silver in Sochi. It has been a long time before I accepted this result and stopped considering it a terrible failure.
Has it something to do with the fact that Yuzuru Hanyu, who won the gold medal, didn’t skate the best way in Sochi?
– Yes. The door was open. But I wasn’t able to take advantage of it. Now when time has passed, I must admit that the result was fair. I just wasn’t ready to become an Olympic champion. And if so, then I didn’t deserve a gold medal. But in Pyeongchang, I had the feeling that the time has come. I matured to become a champion, even if it was just a team event.
However, you had mistakes.
– It’s different. It is a bit strange to explain this, but these are different things to be ready to fight for a medal and just to desire it. The undoubtful pros of that defeat in Sochi – it made me wiser. In sports, we often become hostages of the result: how many Grand Prix Finals you have, how many medals, how many titles. Behind all this, it is somehow forgotten that skaters, even such incredible ones as Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova, are living people, not animals who can be chasen with a whip from medal to medal. And they are not robots. They have emotions, this is as much the part of their career as the performances, and who knows what remains in memory of the fans. I myself felt like a robot before the Games in Sochi, I was programmed only to win and I really broke when this program wasn’t completed.
 

aftershocks

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This was likely already posted awhile ago: Nam Nguyen interview with John Wilson Blades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwArsoDqFwg

Nam gives some interesting and quirky responses. It really can't be the junk food that makes him skate better! :lol: I'll have to check out the way Brian Orser grabs and hands over skate guards to his skaters. :p

Cool that Nam enjoyed working with Kurt Browning for this season. Nam's love of Gene Kelly era films to hang out in sounds delightful. I've heard that Kelly and his wife hosted fun dinner parties with a stellar guest list back in the 1940s. BTW, Kelly's co-star in Singing in the Rain was Donald O'Connor. :)
 

Alilou

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This was likely already posted awhile ago: Nam Nguyen interview with John Wilson Blades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwArsoDqFwg

Nam gives some interesting and quirky responses. It really can't be the junk food that makes him skate better! :lol: I'll have to check out the way Brian Orser grabs and hands over skate guards to his skaters. :p

Cool that Nam enjoyed working with Kurt Browning for this season. Nam's love of Gene Kelly era films to hang out in sounds delightful. I've heard that Kelly and his wife hosted fun dinner parties with a stellar guest list back in the 1940s. BTW, Kelly's co-star in Singing in the Rain was Donald O'Connor. :)

The link is to a Sui&Han interview. Do you have the one for Nam?
 

Sedge

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He had one in his program for Sectionals....so that is a good bet.
4S/3T....he scored '87 plus' with it
 
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