Career best. Missed the 3S but who cares?
The 3S did cost him a 4th place finish, but really with the top 3 so far ahead of
everyone else, it wouldn't have made a difference.
The Brown arguably should have come 5th, and Cha 4th, IMO. Hanyu's 2nd half of his FS was great but the PCS was essentially at maximum threshold 90.44 with 90.50 as the max, and overscored on IN higher than allowed, and his FS was performed better at Japanese Nationals. Of course in the SP, he got exceedingly PCS for such a major error. As much as there are those who gripe that Hanyu is constantly shafted by the ISU - they were rather generous to him here letting him get 4th and 90 PCS with two falls -
again, a la 2014.
I'll happily eat my words though, previously stating that Jason was incapable of such a high finish at the Olympics - which could have been 4th had he gotten the salchow. The point is he delivered two pretty much clean programs (at least it was a double salchow, so it wasn't an "error" so much as not maxing out). Kinda weird but amazing that both US men really only just gave up points on their euler series and that was their only error across the event.
Although Chen getting a V on his spin was a blip too. Interesting how the two de facto judges' faves, Chen and Hanyu, got nailed for that. (They were the only ones in the top 17 to get hit with that tech call, and then Mozalev and Litvintsev in 18th and 19th place got a V call.)