Why are people putting Patrick Chan and Max Aaron in the same category here? They are in two different stratospheres. Chan absolutely had a chance to medal at TEB had he skated in the FS. But Aaron? LOL This season alone he managed to lose the FS to Uno, Balde, and Menshov. The only way he would have been finishing 2nd at TEB is if Uno, Kovtun and Murakami had gotten food poisoning and withdrew. He had a chance to qualify for the GPF after his lucky win at Skate America. But he blew it by digging himself a 20 point hole in a much more competitive field where he could not afford to make any mistakes. He robbed himself of that chance, and putting him into the GPF as a wildcard would be a complete and undeserved gift.
Just use the SP placements and let the chips fall as they will. Chan will likely make it in anyway. We'll lose Liza, and that is unfortunate, but such is life.
And nothing amuses me more that people splitting hairs on what is fair and unfair in freaking figure skating. It's figure skating. It's 80% unfair. From politics, to power feds, to judging blocks, to inconsisted edge calls and BS PCSs, and a myriad of other issues, using SP placements to decide the points for GPF(in such extenuating circumstances), thus putting some of the political favourites at a disadvantage, is one of the least unfair things that happened in skating in a while.