Skate America 2015- Men

The men's event was less dismal than the ladies event here, but it was still not great. Like with the dance event, I don't know that I agree with the judging.

It kind of still amazes me that Max Aaron won. He has clearly been working on improving his PCSs, but he still has a very long way to go. For a long time, I've had a lot of problems with Max Aaron and his choreography (or lack thereof). His programs have always looked like jump drills, and in the IJS that shouldn't cut it. And yet, it does. Max Aaron has always been rewarded for good jumps in the TES, which is fine, but that also bleeds over to the PCS, where the difficulty of the jumps should have zero impact. He finally has a little bit of choreography, but not a ton, and his skating skills are still nowhere near as good as they should be. The biggest problem for me is the setup of the judging system, because judges have so much to watch, they often neglect the PCS and focus entirely on the TES. This leaves the system rewarding skaters despite their poor skating skills, if only because they aren't paying close attention to it.

Shoma Uno won the freeskate, but finished in second overall here. He's still new to the senior ranks, but for me, he deserved to win here. He's got great skating skills and choreography, and he commits fully to his programs. His jumps could use a little more control but overall they were good here. He's one of my favourite skaters, and the showdown between him and Yuzuru will be interesting this year and in the next few years.

Jason Brown did not skate as well as he could have here, but lost out in the short mostly because he doesn't have the quality of quads some of the others have.

Han Yan and Konstantin Menshov have good jumps when they can manage to land them, however they are incredibly inconsistent and don't have a ton of other stuff to back them up when their jumps fail them.