I'm not thrilled about Green & Parsons going back to Skate Canada. There's no point in rerunning a battle you've already won. I was rooting for having them at SA, which would have made the field there deeper, and put them in the position to chase.
But it's really going to come down to who's ready. Post-Olympic seasons: you tend to get lower-ranked teams that are just fired up & have been working their butts off because this is the big season of opportunity, and then you get top teams that are exhausted & needed a break & come back looking very not ready (though they score well because there are holes in the ice-dance hierarchy). Then you get the teams of all ages that moved around or thought about splitting or retiring and are just not that far into their preparations yet.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see who is really ready.
I think this year is likely to be a tough challenge for Green & Parsons because they had such a noisemaker of an FD last year. (Not entirely certain they'll change it, but assuming they will & you can't hit it out of the park every year). That said, they ended last year on a big note; and they do have the skills to follow that up if they're ready. Meanwhile, expectations from fans for Carreira & Ponomarenko are way down so it's gonna be easier to make people happy if they show up looking better. Lajoie & Lagha and Fournier-Beaudry & Sorensen will have to have new FD material, which ought to help. Gilles & Poirier--it'll be a miracle if they're ready by SC. Hawayek & Baker, I think, will be ready. After the late start to their season last year, they've got to want to get a faster jump on this one. And this is a big year for them to be able to move up, plus with G&P on their tail at last year's Nationals, I reckon they're probably pretty motivated. Fear & Gibson were a mess early last season. I'd expect a better start, plus they're gonna reap some more love from the European judges with the Russians out + a home GP. Guignard & Fabbri and Chock & Bates--I'm really curious how they will look. They had long seasons last year, but they seemed to decide pretty early that they wanted to continue; and a world title can be pretty motivating. Anyway, we'll see. There should be some surprises for sure. Some people are gonna be ready. We just don't know who they are.
I'm looking forward to seeing the youngsters, Wolfkostin & Chen and the Browns, because I've no expectations there whatsoever and think it will just be fun to watch them skate and learn.