Hello speed skating enthusiasts!
Another summer has flown by and we are finally back in
action for our 6
th
season of fantasy speed skating. The early season
results have trickled in, the rosters have been selected, and now it’s time to
watch our teams slug it out at the World Cups.
As always, Draft Night impressed me. I always go in
with a list of skaters that I think I’ll be able to snag deep into the draft,
but then managers who have no business making good picks (no offence to most of
you, but that’s most of you) go out and make good picks. This year, the first five
or six rounds of the draft were noticeably strong. Across the board, managers
were picking strong skaters to fill the majority of active roster spots on
their team.
Also, before I forget, I want to thank managers for (mostly)
showing up prepared for Draft Night. After a couple of early scares (read: Jalen
struggling really hard to keep track of skaters in two pools), the entire
league pulled it together and we finished in record time despite adding 8 new
teams to the league. Bravo!
But you didn’t come here to be told that we drafted quickly
or that the league as a whole made respectable picks. No, you came here to see
how your team stacks up against those of your friends and competitors. You came
here to see me praise your picks and shit on those who made bad choices. So let’s
just get right into it.
Here are the official
2023-2024 Crappy Tire
Preseason Power Rankings
(
Brought to you by Crappy Tire – the unofficial
retail sponsor of the Stage 3 Men’s and Women’s Choir Fantasy Speed Skating
League
):
Anna
Christian
Jake + Dylan
Sam
Simon
Paul
Cody
Yankun
Charlotte
Daniel
Jalen
Matt L
Cooper
Peter
Max
Matt Z
Anders
Kiersten + Hayleigh
Joel
Rob
Thomas
Ryan
Lindsey
Alex
MCV
Jenna
Luca
Taylor
Bon
Darby
Zach
Ian
Greg
Eric + Emil
Brooke
Nick
Sofia
Abby
Rachel
Jill
Before I get too far ahead of myself, I must first apologize
for releasing these “pre”-season rankings after the first World Cup has already
come and gone. The rankings were mostly put together before the first races finished,
but finding the time to write this column was a bigger struggle and the main
reason for the delay. Now, I’ll be honest, I tried not to let any results from
this weekend skew my pre-season opinions, but I can’t say it had zero effect on
the rankings. If you drafted Masaya Yamada: Congrats, your team probably still
sucks. But if you drafted Nadezhda Morozova or Connor Howe…. maybe you’ve
dropped a spot or two. Overall though, these rankings are a reflection of what I
thought of all your teams heading into this past weekend.
Just like last season, I have put these teams into
five rough groupings that roughly indicates their chance at winning the whole
league, a bit of prize money, or an (un)coveted Emin Award. Here are the five
groups:
Top Cheddar
The Chase
The Pack
Playing to Lose
Emin Chasers
Let’s start from the top and break it all down.
Top Cheddar
Anna
– With three potential
first-round picks, this team has possibly the most loaded top end in the entire
league. Jutta Leerdam is one of the few favourites to finish as the highest
earning skater this year. Ivanie Blondin is arguably the most consistent big-points
earner since we started this league six years ago. Marijke Groenewoud is scheduled
to miss the first World Cup, but if she starts World Cup 2 the way she finished
the 2022-23 season then this team may just be the favourite to finish at the top.
Christian
–
A pile of very high quality A Group sprinters forms the core of this mighty
team: Jutta Leerdam, Vanessa Herzog, Yuma Murakami, and Wataru Morishige are
all grade-A talent while Marrit Fledderus, David Bosa, and Kurumi Inagawa are
fantastic depth sprinters. From top to bottom, this team can put up serious
points at the World Cups, particularly during double 500m weekends. Looking to
regain the league’s respect after a couple of sub-optimal seasons (as well as
after tarnishing his name in the 2019-2020 Draft Rigging Scandal), this league
organizer is on a mission this season.
Jake+Dylan
–
Jordan Stolz is clearly the highest potential skater on this team, but what is
shaping up to be renaissance for Tatsuya Shinhama has this team full of
optimism. Vanessa Herzog and Zhongyan Ning will undoubtedly earn solid points,
but the real difference maker will be Joy Beune, Peder Kongshaug, and Hallgeir Engebraten.
If these three can qualify for a lot of distances for WSD and World Allrounds,
this team will finish in the money.
Sam
– Another year of
refining his skater projection model and things are looking better than ever
before. Injured skaters drafted this year? None. Retired? None. That’s two big
steps in the right direction for a team that always manages to impress.
Simon
– You know the
drill… I write these columns, I get to put myself near the top, I get to feel
good about my team before it implodes before my very eyes due to a sad mixture
of underwhelming results, injuries, and retrospectively mediocre picks. Nuff
said.
Paul
– Drafting at the
tail end of the snake, this manager somehow locked down Mommy Miho and Kimi
Goetz with back-to-back picks. Yuma Murakami, Peder Kongshaug and Mia Kilburg
were some of the most predictable points earners last season, while Mei Han and
Qishi Li will likely end this season as some of the most undervalued skaters
once again. From top to bottom, this team is about as solid as they get.
Cody
– I’ll be honest,
my initial numbers have this team lingering down in
The Chase
, a
respectable starting point for any normal manager… but this team is not led by
a normal manager. After winning last season despite my model projecting a
bottom-of-the-money finish, I’ll give this guy the benefit of the doubt once
again and keep him in the top 10 for now.
Yankun
– Now I know what
your thinking: this guy finished dead last in the league last year and didn’t
even have the balls to show up and draft his own team on Draft Night this season.
A quick look at his roster and you immediately see Jorrit Bergsma who failed to
qualify for World Cups and Tingyu Gao—arguably the skater in the league with
the most question marks next to his name.
But think about what the combo of Stolz and Blondin
can do to carry a team. Supported by veterans Herzog and Sablikova as well as
up-and-comer Momoka Horikawa, this team has the potential for a very good
2023-2024 season.
The Chase
Just shy of the
Top Cheddar
is
The Chase
,
the next best teams with a chance to win it all. These teams all have a very
good chance at finishing in the money but, for those of you that can count, there
are 16 teams currently sitting in the top two groups. Nonetheless, last season
only
one team in this group finished outside the money
. Nothing is guaranteed in
such a deep field of fantasy teams, but these teams are easily the most likely
contenders to upset some of the teams in the
Top Cheddar
.
The Chase currently consists of:
Charlotte, Daniel,
Jalen, Matt L, Cooper, Peter, Max
, and
Matt Z
. Patrick Roest, Femke Kok,
Davide Ghiotto – these are the types of skaters that can be found on a handful
of these teams. If the manager selected a skater who wasn’t currently racing
internationally, they at least usually took a skater with a
chance
at
racing this season such as Elizaveta Golubeva or Tingyu Gao. If they took Karolina
Bosiek, they at least took her in a relatively late round. Limiting the
downside of a roster goes a long way in securing consistent points in a season-long
fantasy skating league and each of these teams seem well positioned to make it
through the year on solid footing.
The Pack
With the addition of 8 new teams this year, the middle
of the field feels tighter than it’s ever been. I have these teams projecting
for roughly 2000 to 2200 points this season and it’s all but certain that the
actual standings will end up being even tighter than that. One good weekend
from one clutch racer at World Champs and any of these team could skyrocket
into
The Chase
or potentially even into the
Top Cheddar
.
The managers currently in
The Pack
are
Anders,
Kiersten+Hayleigh, Joel, Rob, Thomas, Ryan, Lindsey, Alex, MCV, Jenna
, and
Luca
.
With a healthy mixture of veterans with solid rosters and rookies who managed
to piece together something special in their first season,
The Pack
is a
fine place to start the season if you have aspirations of winning money this
season. Every year, at least one team that starts here ends up in the money.
Playing to Lose
Not every team has a realistic shot at a top-10
finish. Some teams play to win, some are just playing for fun, and a few teams look
like they are playing to lose. That last group of teams appears to be led by
the following managers:
Taylor, Bon, Darby, Zach, Ian
, and
Greg
.
Two of these managers won money last season, so maybe they can prove me wrong
again this year. But, at this point, things aren’t looking too hopeful.
Most of the teams that find themselves down in this
category actually look pretty similar to the teams in the pack but are missing
maybe just one or two ingredients. Maybe they don’t have that one big name, or
maybe the depth on the tail end of the team is lacking. A key injury or one or
two skaters not making WSD or World Allrounds/Sprints would likely be enough to
keep any one of these teams out of the money this season.
The real killer here is the collection of not-so-good
picks. Skaters like Michelle de Jong, Jorrit Bergsma, and Min-Seok Kim aren’t
even skating at World Cups this fall. Others, like Hein Otterspeer, Thomas
Krol, Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong, Ryota Kojima, and Marcel Bosker are racing a
lot less than they did last season. It looks like a lot of the managers this
far down the rankings successfully identified good skaters but didn’t do their
homework regarding who is actually set to race a full slate at World Cups.
Luckily, these no way to go but up for these teams.
Oh wait, sorry… what was that? You’re telling me
things could get worse?
There are worse teams than these??
My God…
Emin Chasers
Welcome to the basement. If the previous group of
teams was
Playing to Lose
, then I think it’s pretty obvious where we
have fallen to with these teams. Every season, we hand out a selection of awards
called the
Emin Awards
. No one should want these awards. They are for
things like Worst Pick, Most Unimproved, and Worst Finish. Yet, inexplicably,
every year there is a group of teams actively competing for the
Emins
. This
season, these teams are managed by:
Eric+Emil, Brooke, Nick, Sofia, Abby,
Rachel
, and
Jill
. Missing from this group is Cooper Emin himself,
the (really hot) man for whom the
Emin Awards
were named after. Cooper
is on a mission to redeem himself after an abysmal 2019-2020 season. Let’s go
Cooper! Congrats for not being in this group!
As for the measly crew who is stuck down in the
Emin
Chasers
, all I can say is better luck next year. It’s not over till it’s
over (but it’s damn close to being over for y’all).
At the end of the day, these rankings are just a prediction.
One or two savvy free agent pickups and a well managed bench could be the difference
between finishing 30
th
and finishing 10
th
. If past seasons
have taught is anything, it’s that ANYTHING can happen in this league. Every
season we see skaters rocking podium finishes who couldn’t even make A Group the
year before. On the other hand, some of the skaters who are a consensus 1
st
or 2
nd
round pick always end up being a bust and letting down 4-5
managers.
I look forward to most of you trying to prove my
rankings wrong. Let me know in the comments if you agree/disagree with where I’ve
put your team!
That’s all I got for today. Since this post is coming
a bit late, I’m hoping to have the next column out within the next day or two.
My goal is to post columns after each World Cup event, including an update to
the
2023-2024 Crappy Tire Power Rankings
after every pair of World Cups.
I hope y’all enjoyed watching the chaos of World Cup 1
and I’ll see you next time!
Cheers,
Dad