Hello speed skating enthusiasts,
Welcome back to Dad’s Column! It’s been a while since
anything decent was posted here, so hopefully most of you weren’t checking in
for content every few weeks (totally not a reference about Garrett). Did you
get sick and tired of all those sunny days? I did. Does it seem like summer
lasted forever? I thought it did. Calgary was 14 and sunny today, nice enough
for Dad to spend some time outside in shorts and a t-shirt. But, fear not – even
better days are just around the corner. World Cup speed skating kicks of in just
a few days, officially bringing a start to the fantasy speed skating season.
Alas, the wait is finally over!
I had big ambitious plans to start this season off on
the right foot, but then I realized I could probably just copy and paste chunks
of my pre-season column from last year and no one would notice. So, here we
are.
Back by popular demand, we’re starting this season off
with the
Pre-Season Crappy Tire Power Rankings
. Since I’m getting sick and
tired of all the damn complaints about our gargantuan 10,000-word columns, I’ll
keep this one nice and short. Instead of cramming a bunch of stuff together,
today will just be the rankings and a quick look at Draft Day. For the loyal
readers, I’ll follow this up with a pre-season preview in the coming days.
Another thing I’ve learned from all your feedback is
that I shouldn’t fuck around with long intros and blabble on for 5 minutes
before I even get into the meat of it, so let’s just get right into it today.
Draft Day
We say this every year, but Draft Day was a huge success.
And this time it was successful for more reasons than normal. First,
most
of you actually showed up (thanks again for that). This always makes things a
lot easier for the organizers and helps the draft run nice and smooth. Second,
we got through the whole damn thing in record time. Third, the variety of picks
was refreshing. And fourth, as always, the quality of picks just keeps getting
better, and better, and better.
That last point will become clear once we get down to
the
Crappy Tire Power Rankings
, but I do want to touch on the third
point quickly. Historically, first overall picks have generally been pretty
unanimous. Last year, Miho Takagi went first overall in 4 pools and only Jess
picked someone different (it was Chris Huizinga, and one day someone will make
a documentary about how wild that pick was). The previous year, which was also
the first time we had five pools, Jordan Stolz was picked 5 times straight for a clean
sweep of all the first-overall picks.
In contrast, we saw 4 unique first-overall picks at
this year’s draft. To reach that level of variety, we’d have to combine the
last three drafts. There were also 15 different skaters picked in the entirety of
the first round, which has only 8 draft slots per pool. This might not seem
that high, but this is actually a very good variety of picks.
This variety of picks carried on throughout the entire
draft. Kim Min-Sun went as early as 12
th
and as late as 53
rd
.
Tim Prins went as early as 7
th
and as late as 34
th
(that’s
the first and fifth rounds!). Isabelle Weidemann went 18
th
and 53
rd
.
Qi Yin went 18
th
and 56
th
. Greta Myers went 17
th
in Pool E and is still a free agent in Pool B. And the list could go on and on.
Ultimately, this doesn’t mean too much, but I gotta say it is exciting as hell
that we are going into an Olympic year with so little consensus on who the best
skaters are.
Pre-Season Crappy Tire Power Rankings
And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for. Curious
to see how your team stacks up relative to the rest of the competition? The
Power
Rankings
, sponsored by Crappy Tire, are just the place where this happens. These
rankings reflect how Dad feels about your team’s chances at winning the whole
damn thing. I run a complex model that factors in mostly vibes and a bit of
math and–voila! Out pop the rankings.
Though it doesn’t mean too much in the pre-season,
just remember to keep in mind that these rankings are an attempt to project how
teams will finish the season rather than how good they are currently doing.
When your crummy, low-ranked team shoots up to the top of the league after a
very lucky World Cup 1, don’t come running to Dad with your annoying complaints.
Just remember, I’m usually right about this stuff! (please nobody fact check me…)
Also, just as a quick housekeeping note, I’ll
(hopefully) update the rankings after every pair of World Cups as well as after
any Olympic/Championship events.
Top Cheddar
1 Christian
2 Simon
3 Sam
4 Dylan
5 Cody
6 Max
7 Jordan
8 Matt Z
These teams are the best of the best. Unsurprisingly, the
Top Cheddar
is starting this season stuffed with a bunch of veteran
managers. Three of these managers are league organizers, three of them are contributors
to this blog, and four of them have played every single game since we started
this whole thing back in 2018. In total, the Top Cheddar has 43 years of
experience in this league (I’m not sure if I’m amazed or disgusted by that
number). One of the cooler things might be that two of these managers were never
speed skaters themselves. Always love to see people joining our community
despite not growing up in the sport!
For the most part, these are deep teams with great top
skaters. None of these teams appear to have made a miss in the early rounds and
each team has a late threat or two who, if they pop off this season, could win
their team the league title. Common skaters are Kok, Ning, Maltais, Morozova,
and Zdrahalova. Many of these teams’ performances will go up and down with those
skaters’ results.
The Chase
9 Taylor
10 Ian
11 Charlotte
12 Jenna
13 Reece
14 Thomas
15 Connor
16 Lindsey
17 Greg+Sofia
18 Zach
These are the next best teams. Some of them will end
up in the money and all of them are within striking range of the very top. For
the most part, none of the picks on these teams are bad. Managers may not have
got the absolute top value in each round, but avoiding costly mistakes is one
of the surest ways to draft a solid roster. Common skaters in this group are
Lollobrigida, Dubreuil, Shinhama, Morishige, Horikawa, Di Stefano, and Hiller-Donelly.
This group also drafted 15 different Dutch skaters, which can really go two
different ways. The Dutch may be the most clutch country at the Olympics, but
the insane competition just to make their Olympic team surely means many of
those 15 will be ending their seasons early this year.
The Pack
19 Bon
20 Kiersten+Hayleigh
21 MCV
22 Paul+Anna
23 Abby
24 Joel+Josh
25 Eric+Emil
26 Ryan
27 Peter+Brooke
28 Shawna+Kathy
29 Rachel
30 Matt L
31 Emma+Darby
These teams are all very, very solid, but maybe left a
little bit on the table relative to the teams ranked above. These teams are
also projected to be very evenly matched as we head into the first World Cup.
The model (which, I must remind you, is based mostly on vibes) is suggesting
that the top and bottom team in this group are separated by a measly 75 points.
In a league where many teams finish with well over 2000 points, a 75-point gap
is tiny. At this point in the season, it wouldn’t be wrong to look at this
entire group as a 13-way tie for 19
th
in the Power Rankings.
Ultimately, none of these managers should be very down
on their team. Once the World Cups start and we get a better idea of what form
each skater is in, we should expect quite a few of these teams to trickle up
into
The Chase
and maybe even into
The Top Cheddar.
Of course,
teams can also go the other direction down the rankings. The difference maker
among the following managers could simply be how active each manager actually
manages there team—ideally by always activating the best possible skaters and supplementing
their roster with timely free agent pickups.
Getting a Taste of Fantasy Speed Skating
32 Erik
33 Jack
34 Nick
35 Adam
Not all of us have been playing fantasy speed skating
for 8 years. In fact, some of us have never played before. This group is
entirely made up of rookie managers who are just starting to get a feel for how
this league works. We all had to start somewhere. And, to be entirely honest,
most of us started much lower than these guys (Dad would definitely include
himself with “most of us”). Even if they’re starting the season way down here,
props to these fellas for drafting some pretty impressive rookie teams. Don’t
be surprised if one or two of these teams find themselves in a decent rank by
the end of the season.
Emin Chasers
36 Robert
37 Daniel
38 Garrett
39 Cooper
This is where the real shit begins. This is the type
of territory that Stepdad generally feels most comfortable in. The grubby
bottom, where things don’t seem to be looking great and you only have yourself to
blame. Though, as I look through these rosters right now, I’m actually thinking
“wait, these don’t even look that bad??”. Whelp. I guess all things are relative.
Compared to the rest of the league, these are the teams that are currently the
most likely to scoop up an undesirable
Emin Award
at the end of the season.
As the name of the award suggests, it wouldn’t be the first time that one of
these managers scoped up some of that hardware.
Full Circle
40 Darius
As Christian pointed out live during the draft, we had
a nice full circle moment when Darius used his 5
th
pick to draft
Anders Johnson 33
rd
overall. For those who don’t know the lore,
Anders Johnson once picked Darius in this very league. This is the first
instance that I know of managers/skaters picking each other. Though, in this
instance, the weight of each pick wasn’t quite comparable. Anders had picked Darius
in the first round (2
nd
overall pick)!
All that said, that aint the reason that Darius’s team
is way down in here in last place. The real reason is that this team is ass. Maybe
it was Greta Myers in the third round instead of, oh, I don’t know, maybe
Cooper Mcleod, Kjeld Nuis, or Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong??? Or maybe, despite it
being a cute moment, it was Anders Johnson in the 5
th
round instead
of Kim Min-Sun, Ayano Sato, or Martina Sablikova. It seems that the only thing
this team has going for itself is that it currently holds 29 national records and
only one skater on the roster
doesn’t
have a record (it’s Jorrit Bergsma,
if that saves you the trouble of looking).
As the clock strikes midnight, I guess it’s time for
me to wrap this one up. Racing begins this Friday in Salt Lake City with World
Cup 1. This means that any roster changes need to be submitted by 11:59 PM
Mountain Time. I’ll be back again shortly with a pre-season post along with the
first instalments of the Injury and Free Agent Trackers. If this is the first
and only blog post you read all year then happy World Cup watching and best of
luck to your team this season!
Best,
Dad