Registered: Dec 2014
Location:
Posts: 206

It's only October thus far and the season is early and all, but I don't do Fantasy Football, so let's look at OOM ranking year to date for the US teams:

H. McCormick - 14th
B. Clark - 21st
C. Brown - 31st
J. Shuster - 57th

Teams have qualified a few times, but no wins. The events they qualified didn't seem to have a particularly deep field (Clark's points came from a Tier 2 event of a biiger event). So, I suspect teams probably won the games they were supposed to. Shuster seems to have slipped up a bit this season thus far, not qualifying in the three events listed thus far. I'm curious how this season and OOM will shake out with "Broomgate" being behind us... Eliminating all but the top Canadian team from the OOM list to date (since the US only has to play one Canadian team at Worlds) , and McCormick jumps up to 7th. I think last year, the US was up a bit more with the same analysis, but some of the other men's teams have fared well this season thus far.

Now The US women rankings OOM year to date:

N. Roth - 18th
J. Sinclair - 25th
C. Christensen - 31st
J. Schultz - 41st

This seems like a similar story to the men. Kind of a "meh" result thus far. Essentially all of Roth's points come from 3rd at the Stu Sells, and she didn't qualify at the Oakville OCT Fall Classic. For Sinclair, it was the opposite, 3rd at the Oakville, OCT Fall Classic and not qualifying at the Stu Sells (or Shorty Jenkins). On the world stage, the women's field seems to be deeper than the world mens teams, with Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland, Russia, China (with the return of Bingyu Wang, I put them back in the picture), and Canada (obviously) all being serious medal contenders. Japan surprised everyone last year at Worlds, so we'll see if they can continue their ride.

The US women (whichever team goes to worlds) will have their work cut out for them to break into that upper echelon of teams. The US men have shown the potential to play with that echelon of teams (as a bronze last year at World's would demonstrate). I'm not sure a US womens team has really proven that yet; I'm hoping they do this year. Especially since an Olympic berth is on the line.

While there have been changes in the HPP rules (perhaps incrementally better than it was), I still find it interesting (puzzling?) how qualifying for the Olympic trials requires a top 15 OOM ranking. It just seems like there will be quite a few "discretionary selections", and not things being played out on the ice. The US champion does not get an automatic qualification to the trials. I suppose the reason is to prevent a 10th seeded US team to go on a Cinderella run and win. But the past US winners have shown that at the end of the week, a team that's been highly ranked/seeded has usually made it to the playoffs, where any of the top 1-3 teams aren't flukes. I feel the rules are to try to appease all parties? To have the (very small) chance that teams can still play their way to the trials, but still give (a lot of) power to the HPP.

Let the message board season commence...

Good curling

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Registered: Feb 2016
Location: Vienna, VA
Posts: 98

I see what you're saying about the greater depth on the women's side, but I've been more surprised by the U.S. men's results this year so far. Other than one good run by McCormick, they really haven't done well. I don't see the women losing quite as many games they really should be winning.

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