My all-time underrated favorite is Maria Sotskova. She has textbook jumps with delayed rotation and amazing height and distance. She skates with maturity, elegance and she also has good skating skills. Also, just a simple addition, she’s gorgeous. The only problem in Masha’s skating for me is her speed, sometimes her programs begin to sort of drag.
Agree, though, IMHO all what Maria is missing is that she cannot open up emotionally (yet). She is, as to say, an intellectual skater, she rather skates with her mind. When she will add this missing part, no one will be daring to say that she is boring or whatever. And yes, she truly IS gorgeous.
Goin WAY back but Janet Lynn never received the accolades she deserved. Fellow and future skaters loved her. And she did well nationally but the "old guard" overscored strong school figure skaters in the free skate making it impossible for Janet to win. Certainly, the Trixi Shuba's deserved good school scores but their free skate scores slightly below Janet's were a joke. Not new, but that did make the most significant change to figure skating by eventually eliminating schools and introducing the short and long program for singles.