Hello speed skating enthusiasts,
With World Cup 6 now behind us, the World Cup Circuit
is officially over. All the points for the World Cups have been paid out,
along with the points that each full roster earns for their final World Cup
Classification Ranking.
For those of you that have taken a quick look at the league
rankings over the past few days, you’ll notice that things have shaken up quite
a bit! Well, over the past two weekends of racing, over a quarter of the league’s
points have been paid out. That is a massive points surge, and some teams were definitely
better set up to grab more than their fair share.
Today, I’m going to dive in to the
why
behind
the big changes in the rankings. Which skaters are on a banana hair tear? Who
is sucking a fat one? And who makes Dad want to pull his hair out the most?
It’s the Stolz Show, Baby
I’m going to start by posting the top 20 skaters of
the past two weeks. This is how many points they earned:
1. Jordan Stolz 350
2. Miho Takagi 185
3. Zhongyan Ning 184
4. Valerie Maltais 164
5. Femke Kok 150
6. Kimi Goetz 150
7. Ivanie Blondin 147
8. Joy Beune 139
9. Irene Schouten 125
10. Min-Sun Kim 121
11. Mei Han 117
12. Erin Jackson 111
13. Marijke Groenewoud 110
14. Brittany Bowe 98
15. Tatsuya Shinhama 93
16. Laurent Dubreuil 91
17. Davide Ghiotto 90
17. Ted-Jan Bloemen 90
19. Jae-Won Chung 88
20. Bart Swings 84
Now, I think this list speaks for itself. Hell, I
almost don’t even have to continue writing. The story here is that Stolz is
single-handedly carrying bad teams back into the competition and driving solid
teams to the very top. Nuff said.
There really isn’t much else to say about that, but I’ll
try to contextualize this a bit for you. In the past two weeks, Stolz has
earned almost twice as much as the next best skater. Mommy Miho is a points
machine, consistently finishing at or near the top of the skater rankings
season after season after season. Yet, right now she’s getting absolutely
embarrassed by some kid from rural Wisconsin who was still wearing diapers when
she went to her first Olympics (and let’s keep in mind that Miho isn’t old by
any measure!). Combine Mommy Miho’s points over the past two weeks with any
skater other than Ning and the total will still fall short of Stolz.
So, how many skaters is Stolz worth? Well, at his
current pace he’s worth just shy of two Miho’s, but Miho is already in a pretty
impressive tier. Irene Schouton is a prototypical first round pick. She skates multiple
distances and is insanely good at all of them. She also happened to miss the
same number of World Cups as Stolz, so their World Cup Classification points
were equally affected. How many Schoutens is one Stolz worth? Exactly 2.8 Schoutens.
Ragne was another common first round pick. Yes, she
was dealing with some sickness over the past two weeks, but she still managed
to win the long-distance classification and earn the maximum points there. Even
with that haul, you need more than four Ragnes to make up for one Stolz. If
half your active roster was Ragne, you’d STILL be behind one Stolz.
Wataru Morishige is having an incredible season. He’s
been putting up serious points in his only distance, the 500m, and just managed
to hold the lead over Larry for the classification title. Yet, you would need almost
five Morishiges to make up for one Stolz.
Mia Manganello (soon to be Di Stefano) has impressed a
lot of us with her incredible points pace this season. Normally considered a steady
4
th
-6
th
place points earner in the mass start, she took a
huge step forward and started really competing for podium spots. On top of that,
she has qualified for A Group in three other distances this season, proving she
isn’t just an MS specialist. Despite all that, a full active roster of Mias
would still earn less than one Stolz. You would need to be able to skate a 9
th
Mia to finally put yourself ahead.
The big Dutch names are usually a safe bet for points later
in the season. Last season, Thomas Krol podiumed at Worlds in both the 1000m
and the 1500m. He also finished 4
th
in the 1000m World Cup
Classification and had another top 10 finish in the 1500m classification. Yet
over the past two weeks, you would need 35 Krols to equal a single Stolz. If
half of a draft pool filled their active rosters to the brim with Krols, they would still earn less than one Jordan Stolz.
Finally, lets take a look at an Olympian, World Champion,
and former World Record Holder. Graeme Fish is undeniably on the upswing. His
skating looks better and he’s moving a lot faster. This is the part of the
season where he really starts piling on the points. But a comparison between
him and Stolz is almost hard to look at. To match Stolz’s recent points haul,
you would need to be able to field Graeme Fish 175 times. If half the league’s
teams were jam packed full of Graeme Fish and they pooled their points, they
would still fall shy of a single Jordan Stolz.
I think you’re starting to get the point.
Stolz now holds the three highest points-earning World
Cup weekends ever seen in the history of this league, two of those being the
last two World Cups of this season. This type of points accumulation is
completely unprecedented. So, if you have Stolz on your team and you find yourself
near the top of the standings, ask yourself: are you really a good manager? Did
you really manage to pick a good team? Or did you actually just manage to pick Stolz?
And if you have Stolz on your roster and you DON’T
find yourself near the top, ask yourself: how the fuck did you mess this up?
Classification Goon Squad
Alright, rant over. I’m done talking about Stolz.
There are about 120 other skaters in this league, so let’s turn our eyes to
some of those. Unlike Stolz, some skaters seem to be on a mission to tank their
teams this season. One of the key parts of the league (that likely doesn’t get
the attention it deserves) is the pile of points that skaters earn for their
World Cup Classification Ranking. These points are paid out at double the rate
as a regular World Cup, so for the non-500m skaters this means that the classification
points represent a quarter of their World Cup points. It shouldn’t be
surprising that success or failure here can really make or break a team.
This season, the best skaters managed to crack 100
points (Stolz, Miho, and Ning all finished between 100 and 104). Another four
skaters earned over 60 points while a further 11 skaters topped 50 points. We’ll
consider 25 points to be the bare minimum for a good skater to earn. This feels
low since many skaters who missed at least one World Cup (like Groenewoud,
Schouten, or Roest) still managed to crack the 50-point barrier for classification
points. But, for the sake of this exercise, we want it to feel low. We’re not
just trying to find skaters that didn’t quite live up to the hype – we’re
trying to find skaters that really, really shit the bed and let their teams
down.
10. Masaya Yamada
–
If the World Cup season had ended back on November 12, Yamada would have put up
100 classification points. Instead, he earned 20. This actually isn’t that bad of
a haul for a skater of his skill level, but considering how far that number dropped
from World Cup 1, I just had to include him on this list.
9. Momoka Horikawa
–
She shredded at both Japanese trials, she shredded at the very start of the World
Cup season, and then she struggled to keep things going over the course of the
circuit. By the end, her 3000m was mediocre at best and her 1500m non-existent.
The managers that put their faith in her earned 12 very, very sad points.
8. Qishi Li
–
She had a crazy good start to the season, posting podium finishes in both the
1000m and 1500m. Then she just… disappeared. Preseason expectations were mixed, and then expectations following World Cup 2 were sky high. In the end, managers
failed to earn a single point from her since November, including in the classification.
7. Isabelle Weidemann
–
This Canadian record-holder managed to miss out entirely on earning classification
points. The last time this happened? 2016, when she was just a wee development
skater cracking onto the World Cup Circuit. Zero is pretty bad, but the fact
that her ceiling wasn’t as high as some of the coming skaters allows me to
leave her up here at 7th.
6. Sander Eitrem
–
This guy was supposed to be the best thing since Patrick Roest, or sliced
bread, or whatever the saying is. At the start of the season, Your Biological
Father was willing to bet the farm on this kid. Instead of some crazy Norwegian
heroics, the managers that drafted this sickly skater are stuck with a measly
18 points.
5. Thomas Krol
–
Just like his old crush Isabelle Weidemann, this horny old Dutchman failed to
earn a single classification point. He has a higher ceiling and a more
impressive resume though, so he finds himself down here with some of the
shitterest of the shitters.
4. Jutta Leerdam
–
Her 24 points just barely makes it under our cutoff, but, as mentioned above,
this cutoff is already super low so anyone falling under this really is a
scrub. Leerdam was picked no later than 3
rd
overall in every pool –
an impressive feat considering Stolz was the undisputed 1
st
overall pick.
The fact that she earned less points in the 2x classification than in a single
World Cup 1000m win is pitiful.
3. Kjeld Nuis
–
Some might say that his fall caused him to lose a bunch of classification points,
but this arrogant fucker missed half the 1500m season (two of those races were
before his fall). Nuis might think he’s the king, but his 14 classification points
suggest that his days of dominating World Cups might be behind him.
2. Nadezhda Morozova
–
Dad is sitting on a stump holding a flow.
He picks off a petal. “I
love her.”
He picks off another
petal. “I love her not.”
He rips off a third
petal. “I love her.”
He sheds a tear as he
pulls off another petal. “I love her not.”
He pulls off another
petal. “I love her.”
He slowly removes the
final petal, choking back tears….
1. Vanessa Herzog
–
There are two reasons to pick Herzog: 1) she’s pretty friggin fast, and 2) she
races every damn weekend. The first point is still relatively true, but she just
broke our trust on the later point and will likely suffer the consequences of this
for many drafts to come. Herzog earned 2 classification points, a disgusting
underperformance for someone who is still considered to be among the best of
the sprinters.
Racing starts back up again with World Championships
in Calgary in a week (February 15
th
). I’ll be in town that weekend
so make sure you track me down and say hi! If all goes as planned, I’ll have an
updated Power Rankings out by then, likely early next week. But, as always, no
promises.
Cheers,
Dad