Power Rankings: Club Men’s – Pre-Regionals

With the club season drawing towards culmination, Skyd is pleased to release our series Power Rankings. These rankings are the compilation of staff input and editorial consideration. With the new TCT Championships format, depth of roster is devalued to a degree that affects potential performance and our rankings below.

1. San Francisco Revolver
2. Denver Johnny Bravo
3. Boston Ironside
4. Seattle Sockeye
5. Texas Doublewide
6. Toronto GOAT
7. Chicago Machine
8. NY PoNY
9. Raleigh Ring of Fire
10. Atlanta Chain Lightning
11. Minnesota Sub Zero
12. Michigan High Five
13. D.C. Truck Stop
14. Boost Mobile
15. Portland Rhino
16. Vancouver Furious George
17. Florida United
18. Madison Club
19. San Diego Streetgang
20. Seattle Voodoo

2. Johnny Bravo Finds Consistency?

With Sneider, Mickle, Farrell, McShane, Lance and more, Bravo may boast one of the most impressive starting 7. While their season has some notable ups and downs, including early season losses to Boost Mobile and Chain Lightning, Bravo has a very high ceiling. Being able to avoid dipping deep into their roster will greatly benefit this team.

3. Boston Ironside, Abandon Ship?

We’re not quite sure where to put this team. They shouldn’t have performed so poorly at the Pro-Flight Finale, but then again, neither should have Revolver.

5. Doublewide ExtraSlim?

You can’t count out Kurt Gibson. Like it or not, Gibson is a game-changer. His rehabilitation and slow re-entrance into competitive form has given Doublewide’s young roster additions some important game reps. That being said, Doublewide may have lost enough of their starting line up from last year’s championship run to fall short this year.

6. GOAT Climbs A Hill

GOAT’s success at the Pro Flight Finale was impressive but not without some checks to a high ranking. Losses to Chain and Ring on Saturday combined with a ton of close games at Chesapeake leads towards uncertainty. Coupled with a history of lackluster performances at the Club Championships, GOAT is strong, but perhaps not title strong. Having foreigner stars Aaron Neil and Justin Foord doesn’t spell consistency for Toronto as would winning their region over Ironside and PoNY. Then we’ll see about a finals run.

PS: Leafs did good in finally signing Kadri, sorry about the Blue Jay’s season, give the Bills back (please).

7. A Decently Oiled Machine

Chicago is a solid team this year. Their most notable wins come at the Pro Flight Finale over Sockeye and Doublewide. So why are they so low? History. Chicago Machine has been building. They’ve been building to this season and building towards an opportunity to be recognized as one of the best. In beating Sockeye at the Finale twice, they’ve definitely earned that recognition. But when push comes to shove in an important elimination game, will Machine be able to rise to the occasion and beat a team at its best? We think there are 6 teams that can do better and have the experience and talent to win when its on the line. We’d love to see Machine prove us wrong this year. If there’s a year to put doubters to rest once and for all, it’s this one.

8. PoNY, Clap, Clap, Clap.

Winners of Terminus, 3rd place at Colorado Cup, and 3rd at Chesapeake. PoNY boasts one of the most successful resumes for New York since the heyday of NYNY. Aside from Terminus, though (which we’re quick to chalk up as an early season, non-indicator of strength) look at the quality of New York’s wins. Lots of close matches, not too many blow outs. Having seen PoNY perform, one thing they’re quite good at is capitalizing on mistakes, but are they good enough to completely overpower and punish teams? Certainly not when they’re getting blown out by Truck Stop. This may be PoNY’s year, but if anything, it’s on PoNY’s consistency over strength. When it comes to Nationals, we expect the teams with more relative strength to perform on a higher platform than PoNY can reach.

11. Sub Zero To Hero To Zero

Nice work at Chesapeake.

Bottom 5 teams…

Those are the teams that are most tricky. Some thoughts we had: If Furious is in, how come Voodoo isn’t? Shouldn’t ‘team x’ be higher than ‘team y’? How is ‘team z’ not included at all? To first address Furious and Voodoo: while what Voodoo did to help Furious is a great thing and was full of apparently great games, it also allowed them to be trounced this past weekend at sectionals by Vancouver. Ultimately meaningless scores should neither make nationals? Yes, but indicative that the monkey we all know is back on the field. Most all of the rankers think of the Terminus results as irrelevant when trying to characterize their season. Now, we have a fully-stocked Furious team that seems poised to nab a bid to Texas from the Northwest Regionals tournament; while Voodoo, maybe not. As for the remaining four spots left in the top 20, we felt including them would be best especially with regionals coming up. Mid-season? Not as relevant, since it only matters who is in the 16 with no bids officially handed out yet. Now though, these teams are in position to end up in Texas to play, and possibly ending a higher ranked team’s season. All of that said, quantifying who is deserving, and what spot is extremely difficult. Different wins, different tournaments, all at different times. It becomes a gut call, something that isn’t necessarily going to produce the right results.

We’ll be back post-regionals and post-Texas. Until then, feel free to tell us why a team should be higher or lower.

Updated: 9/13