Derby News Network Power Rankings - March 2010

Here's hoping that Montreal makes it up there soon!

Then, once that is acheived, I want to see London rollergirls in there :D The day I see that I will pee my pants with excitement. FACT!

nashville is also playing north star at ece in june.

and more BOOOOOOOOOO!

...but i will say, i'm surprised rose didn't move up a lot more. oly very easily handled texas and rose was within one jam of winning their game vs oly.

i guess, really, it just shows that the top teams could pretty easily shake up on any given day. as one example, the three teams above us (philly) beat us in the last jam or in OT. games that close really are a coin toss.

i love that there are no givens in this sport.

Really great job DNN. This is no easy task. Thanks for giving us fans something to chew over.

I agree about depth of bench. But. It should be pointed out. That Duke City and Bay Area were both missing very key players. Duke was missing muffin who usually scores half of their points. Bay Area Derby was missing (by my count, at least) Brawlling Angel, Burlybot, Taxi Scab, Sassy Slayer and jane Hammer. That is a big chunk out of that roster. I think had bay Area been able to field at least two of those missing skaters they would have done better.

You are right that one skater usually doesn't make that much of a difference but I think when that skater is muffin for duke City or those skaters are the above listed for Bay Area Derby, then it does indeed make a huge difference. and those are two very different teams without those players.

Case in point - Rocky mtn without deRanged. The third place bout would ahve been a very different one with Deranged in it.

Rose and Rat clearly worked their butts off after regionals. they both looked incrediblyy strong.

um hats of to philly though for traveling west to take on Rose, Rat, Oly. That is a mean 1-2-3 punch. Thought Philly played great. They will gel more with their new additions and strategy too. Teflon Donna is one of my faves and I'm sure many agree with me on that.

WHAT??? IT'S AN OUTRAGE I TELL YOU!!!

... as we progress... just like our benches are getting deeper, so is our skill level as a sport. Someday you'll have to play the (future date) equivalent of top 10 level derby to even break into a top 25 rank, I think. I mean, it was once easy to pick which leagues had teams at the tippy top, then there was a gap and you had a fairly different skill level from say 8-15... and then another gap between the teams below that. Now every team that hits top 10 seems to get a flush of hot transfers of the best players on middling leagues...

I was blown away at WWS by two things: how a team can storm in and surprise a lot of people by almost taking out what's considered an undisputed top team - talking about Rose, who have ALWAYS been great but have never been able to beat the greatest when they had the opportunity... and Oly who won by a lot at Nationals so that it seemed like they had the Gotham glow on them (remembering last year when Gotham seemed so completely unbeatable that hardly anyone could even come close). Then here comes Rose within one good jam of beating Oly.

And then the other thing was how my personal definition of a blowout is changing. I might be in the minority here, but a 60 point loss doesn't seem as huge to me as it once did. I saw teams with far greater differentials that didn't seem THAT far apart in skill level, and it blew me away. I feel like its evidence that our game - how we play it, I mean, is getting so much SMARTER... and teams are looking to see what works - found it! Now kill, kill, kill! (as opposed to just being better skaters or faster or having better endurance). Its alarming and sort of great and horrible at the same time how fast a game can get out of hand. High-scoring jams are making for wider point spreads even in games that LOOK fairly even to watch.

And "blowouts" aren't as hard to watch as they once were, either. Both teams can still be playing good derby and one just isn't scoring - BAD vs Rocky, for example. BAD clearly suffered from NOT having their usual deep jammer bench, for sure. And Rocky jammers are OUTSTANDING at maximizing differentials and just not letting opposing jammers score at all. That was a 1-2 punch that meant a HUGE scoring gap. But it used to be that a blowout meant (a lot of times), one teams jammers skating laps while her blockers made the other team look the fool... not so much now... BAD still gave Rocky some bruises, and some great players hit the floor...

I'm just babbling, sorry - its my lunch hour

is that it will probably even get harder just to get the games you need to be able to potentially beat someone at the top, too....

Hey DNN - why not bank track only power rankings? which would of course include flat track team that choose to play bank (cough cough - Legit?)

the pitch of bank is no different than comparing cement to sport court to rink floor to wood floor

... when every competitive banked track team has a shot at playing in a tournament once a year for the title? It makes sense to rank teams when there's no way they could all play each other. But right now our pool of really competitive teams willing to play on the banked track is pretty shallow. Here's hoping it gets deeper and deeper. A little bird (who works at the desk next to mine) was telling me there could be some surprises at Battle of the Banked this year... super competitive flat track teams tired of hearing banked track is harder have been expressing interest. HELL YES!

I have fingers and toes and everything else crossed that one of them comes through. I SWEAR banked track is not harder - just a little different. And the rules differences are mostly negligible, though there are areas ::cough, last jam, cough:: that need work for sure. I think its maybe a little more different than sport court to rink to wood - but I'm with Sara P - its just not that much different!!!

I'm wondering if the high cost of real estate in some cities (particularly in some of the bigger cities) and the lack of available spaces for bouting (which in many cities have been bogarted by flat track) make bank track challenging for a critical mass spread in the absence of massive financing from outside sources--this was an issue sonofapreacherman brought up in a thread about starting up bank track. These deep pocketed outside sources will probably demand ownership of the teams and decision making power over the ruleset which could have the effect of changing the game into something other than what the skaters intend the game to be.