Hello speed skating managers,
Back for a quick update before the Olympics start. And
I mean quick, cause I’m at the airport ready to head to Italy to watch some
Olympic racing and my flight boards in about 10 minutes. So not much fluff
today, essentially just a quick reminder that your team is literally worse than
a bunch of free agents. I will not let you forget that these are skaters that
didn’t get drafted on draft day. The unwanteds. The Shitters. The leftovers.
Call it whatever you want, but it ain’t great. If you can’t beat these skaters,
then what the fuck are you doing??
A Quick Reminder of the Rules (skip this
section if you’re familiar!)
The rules are pretty simple. I’ve made three teams of
skaters who, realistically, should be pretty bad. For a skater to be selected
for one of the three teams, they had to be a Free Agent in at least one pool at
the end of Draft Day. That’s pretty much it—it’s these teams of Free Agents
facing off against your crummy teams.
Now, since we want these teams to have the best
possible chance at beating a couple of actual teams in the league, we’ll give
each team a special rule or two. The first team,
Dad’s Lads
, is
made up of 10 skaters, just like our teams. Their advantage is that they earn
points for their eight best skaters every weekend, determined
after
the
racing happens.
The second team,
The Leftovers
, have a
limitation: this team can’t have a skater that is already on
Dad’s Lads
.
This means this team is really scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes
to Free Agents. To compensate a bit for that, this team will have 12 skaters
and every single one of them will earn points every single weekend.
Finally, the third team,
Jordan Stolz
,
is pretty straightforward. It’s literally just Jordan Stolz. And one of the few
guarantees in life is that this team will not be the lowest team in the
standings. There’s a reason we don’t let any of you fuckers pick this guy on
Draft Day and it will soon become pretty obvious why.
Is Your Team Really Better Than a Bunch of
Free Agents?
So, which unlucky skaters are on these teams? And how
many real teams are these teams of Free Agents beating?
Dad’s Lads
Dad’s Lads had a pretty mediocre WC5 but came out big
with a nice points haul from the World Cup Classification. The team has dropped
to 23
rd
in the standings, so they’re no longer in the top half but
still managing to embarrass quite a few managers. Just two spots ahead of them
is Your Biological Father, and another two spots up is Stepdad, so the chase is
on. Will your dads hold these free agents off? Or are their teams destined to
fall behind Dad’s Lads?
This group is shaping up to be a respectably strong
roster headed into the final two events of the year, so there is a real chance that they
move the rankings once again. The entire roster qualified for the Olympics and
most of them look like they are set to go to World Sprints or World Allrounds.
Overall, I do expect this team to fall slightly after the Olympics but then
they should be able to regain a bit of ground at World Championships and therefore
roughly hold their current standing at the end of the season.
The Leftovers
As predicted in the last update, the best skaters on the
league’s worst teams (such as Marijke Groenewoud and Ragne Wiklund) are still
pulling enough weight to hold off
The Leftovers
for now. This team of legitimate
shitters is lacking talent to such a degree that even Darius’s team is
nearly 200 points up on them. Jenna is 40
th
in the league with 645,
so it’s still close-ish right at the bottom of the standings but (unfortunately) no manager is currently worse than this 608-point Free Agent B
Squad.
This team had a noticeably underwhelming World Cup 5
considering that weekend was likely their best shot at closing any sort of gap.
They followed that up with a half-decent classification haul but didn’t do a
great job qualifying Olympic spots and so they aren’t projected to get a ton of
points down the road either. A lot hinges in their ability to get enough points
at World Championships to pass a team or two in the standings. If Snellink, Lian,
Silaeva, and Kuratsubo go to Worlds, this team could look a bit better. If
Malfatti, Petzold, and Maly can throw together some solid 5000m races at Worlds,
things could be looking up. If most of these skaters take that weekend off,
then
The Leftovers
will be in shambles.
Jordan Stolz
After his insane points per race pace over the first
four World Cups, Stolz cooled off a bit. And by cooled off, I mean he’s no longer
averaging over 1
st
place points in every race he stays on his feet
for. Being only one skater, he faced a pretty substantial disadvantage for the
classification points, but he’s still managing to hold off a few scrub managers.
His 715 points would place him in 37
th
, ahead of Jack, Adam,
Lindsey, and Jenna. Based on how low he's sunk, I bet Adam is really regretting dropping Marten Liiv at
this point….
Stolz will definitely get solid points at the Olympics,
but triple gold plus a good mass start would pot him around 390ish points once
you factor in the essentially automatic track records. This is an insane amount for one
skater, but ultimately not that big a haul at a 4x points event. We should expect at
least one team to hit four digits at the Olympics, so under 400 is not ideal.
This could more than be made up for at World Championships if Stolz decides to
do both sprints and allrounds. If he does both, I think he’s pretty much
guaranteed to stay ahead of at least a few of the teams he’s currently beating.
That’s all I’ve got for now. The Olympics has
officially kicked off so I hope your enjoying the racing! I'll hopefully be writing live from the games, so I don't know exactly what kind of updates and columns you can expect other then you can probably expect something other than total silence for two weeks. Also, if you see
someone in the stands wearing the signature fantasyspeedskating.com hoodie while watching on
CBC Gem, please let me know!
Cheers,
Dad