Skate Canada updated the National Team

gottadance said:

I too would love to know why Balde isn't on the team . I seem to recall he was sick or injured at Nationals? has he recovered and is he training?

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He did Denis's show & looked fine.

National Team isn't the same thing as a list of skaters with assignments. Despite exceptions like the pairs one I noted above, or top skaters being added despite missing the previous Nationals (i.e. Patrick, Kaetlyn, V/M after 2011 or W/P after 2013), the list generally covers only those skaters who finished within the top 5 at Nationals and doesn't tend to expand beyond that unless a top skater has been added on (and in those cases, expanding to six is a matter of fairness -- not penalizing a skater who finished fifth but would have probably dropped lower had that top skater competed). Elladj finished sixth at 2015 Nationals, and though Jeremy Ten retired, I would guess SC decided, as they did in dance, to stick with top 5 only + their top returning man. Being on the National Team is not synonymous with having international assignments: for example, Paradis/Ouellette made the team but currently don't have a Grand Prix assignment, and while they may get one, National Team members Paul/Islam in 2012 and Ralph/Hill in 2013 both went without. And conversely, current examples and history all bear out that skaters below the top 5 will or are likely to pick up Grand Prix and/or Senior B/Challenger spots.

National Team, as far as I understand it, is largely a funding designation, though many of its members, because they're elite internationally, actually receive Sport Canada funding rather than the National Team funding. It's also a general special designation, and its members are those invited first to High Performance Camp for monitoring, media sessions, etc., but it's not directly associated with assignments. And with HPC, certain others may also receive invites for at least part of the weekend's events -- like banking fluff video and individual skater/team photos for Skate Canada -- although I'm unsure if they receive monitoring as well: P/I attended in 2010 as Grand Prix participants, as did Orford/Williams in 2012 and P/O in 2014. P/I were reigning junior champs so hadn't yet qualifed for National Team status, O/W had finished sixth at the preceding Nationals, and P/O finished eighth at their previous Nationals.

As has been noted by many others, the Grand Prix team has actually little do with things we see. It is mainly about funding and sponsorships. Grand Prix assignements and such are separate, mainly because they are decided by things like World Standings, and Seasons best scores. Over the years, they have tended to stick strictly to the Top 5, unless its a major world contender just taking the season off.