A "Recapette" of NHK Trophy 2019

There always seems to be an interesting and/or unexpected development at the last GP event of the Final (which is NHK, more often than not). This time around…

+ We saw Canada’s Roman Sadovsky win a bronze medal after coming in 12^th and 10^th at his only two other GP career appearances thus far. Yes, this may have been more of a commentary on the faltering non-Hanyu competitors than anything else (Voronov? Brown? Ignatov? Hellooooo!?!), but hey, a GP medal is a GP medal! I hope it instills confidence as Sadovsky approaches Canadian Nationals.

+ We saw one U.S. lady (Karen Chen) surprise us in a great way with the 3^rd-best scored SP of the event—unexpectedly finishing ahead of reigning OGM Alina Zagitova—only to surprise us again with one of the lowest-scored Free Skates a day later. Her overall 9^th place finish, combined with Star Andrews’ 8^th place and Megan Wessenberg’s 12^th place, easily amounted to the worst GP showing of the season with regards to U.S. ladies. (The good news: they did much better in all the other GPs.)

+ We saw another representative of Canada—the veteran pair team of Moore-Towers/Marinaro—qualify for their first-ever GP Final with a silver medal NHK finish. (M-T did go to the GPF with previous partner Dylan Moscovitch in 2010, 2012, and 2013.) So I will stop saying “It’s always something” with regards to M-T/M breaking through, because they earned this!

+  And finally, we saw the two U.S. dance teams here (Carriera/Ponomarenko and McNamara/Carpenter) struggle for improvement just as Hawayek/Baker have earlier in the season. It’s been a while since I was so curious to know who’ll grab that third slot at Nationals with regards to ice dance…

The Senior GP Final starts with the Pairs Short Program at 1:50 PM Thursday, so I'll start posting my predictions sometime tomorrow morning!