I will be honest on this one - I would not have objected to Johnny Weir placing higher in the short program. Yes, Lysacek's program is more difficult, but I really thought Weir and Abbott had the better performances of the night here. Still, Weir is so close to Lysacek in points and he's in the third spot, so nothing really to be disappointed about.
Jeremy Abbott was absolutely amazing. He has a great short program and he really does everything he can with it. Combine that with clean jumps and great skating qualities (and very difficult jump intros) and you get an 87.85. Abbott looked very confident.
Evan Lysacek made a small error by turning out of the landing on his triple axel. Still, he looks like such a pro out there, almost daring the judges not to score him high. It's great to watch. 83.69.
Weir was clean and had a great skate. I did see how he might not have gotten the highest grades of execution on this jumps (although I'm not sure if that's the case as I haven't seen that breakdown) but he really performed this program well. Way to step up to the pressure. He got an 83.51.
Adam Rippon landed in fourth place - he had some troubles with his Rippon lutz (which he performs with BOTH hands over his head) and had to double it, but did not fall. He did, however, fall on his footwork. His skating is so beautiful and intricate that he managed to get a fairly high score considering his errors. 72.91.
Armin Mahbanoozadeh was absolutely delightful to watch. He has had juniors success, but not as much success on the senior Grand Prix circuit. He finds himself in fifth place and in medal contention, with a 72.56. He is actually competing with a hip contusion and a muscle bruise, so what a valiant skate!
Ryan Bradley started off with a quadruple toe, triple toe. AMAZING. And then, in Ryan Bradley style, he doubled the rest of his jumps. So disappointing. He wound up with a 70.63. Substantially far from the top three, but not insurmountable.
Brandon Mroz put a hand down on his quad toe loop. Popped his triple axel, just couldn't get enough speed on that spread eagle entrance. I really like that Mroz is a risk-taker, but the problem with that is that when they don't pay off you are left way off the leaders. He scored a 64.45, placing him in 10th.
Stephen Carriere wound up way down in 17th place. No medals for him this season.
The men's free skate is tomorrow afternoon.