Best & Worst of LCS Summer Week 1

The world wakes on Monday in the aftermath of a wild opening weekend for North America’s League of Legends Championship Series.

With a North American-hosted Worlds waiting for the top three teams, the LCS is expected is to be incredibly competitive this split, and the opening weekend did not disappoint. So Fragster is here to break down the best and the worst of week one of the LCS Summer split.

Best: Team Liquid Honda

Like a mighty Honda CR-V, Team Liquid Honda overcame every obstacle in their path to open the split 3-0. It was simply a masterclass in League of Legends, including a perfect game (holding your opponents to zero kills, towers, or neutral objectives) on opening night.

Mid lane icon Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg has been the epitome of this dominance. After three games, he has a perfect KDA (13/0/18). The rest of the team isn’t far behind him either:

• Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau: 29 (10/1/19)
• Lucas “Santorin” Larsen: 25 (6/1/19)
• Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in: 16.5 (1/2/32)
• Steven “Hans sama” Liv: 15 (14/2/16)

The only caveat to this complete and utter domination is that Team Liquid Honda were facing some of the weakest teams in the LCS. Their wins came against Immortals, Dignitas, and a Cloud9 team missing their entire starting bot lane. Their opponents’ combined record for opening weekend is a pitiful 1-8.

Team Liquid continue their season against TSM on June 25.

Worst: Cloud9

This should have been Cloud9’s chance to bounce back from a disappointing Spring split with a revitalized lineup. Then ADC Kim “Berserker” Min-cheol lost his passport and US visa while starting support Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen was forced to enter Covid protocols.

This meant that Cloud9 had to promote Academy bot lane duo Calvin “K1ng” Truong and Mitchell “Destiny” Shaw to fill in for the opening weekend. Cloud9 suffered as a result, posting their worst ever opening weekend in franchise history (the previous mark was a 0-2 start in Summer 2017).

Cloud9 looked understandably disjointed and dropped games title contenders Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid, as well as a game against Golden Guardians. It was arguably one of the toughest opening weekends Cloud9 could have been handed even with a full-strength roster.

Berserker appears to be headed back to the US, at least according to a tweet from Sunday night but it is unclear whether Zven will be able to appear in week two of the LCS also.

Cloud9 appear in the opening match of week two, taking on fellow winless team Dignitas.

Best: Counter Logic Gaming?? (No, not a typo)

CLG finished eighth in the LCS Spring split and only made marginal moves, promoting Academy top laner Niship “Dhokla” Doshi to the starting lineup. And yet, CLG come into Monday atop the LCS standings with a 3-0 record.

In their first perfect start to a split since 2017, CLG looked unstoppable gainst Dignitas, TSM, and Golden Guardians. Granted, it was not the most challenging opening weekend slate but CLG got the job done.

Leading this effort was mid laner Cristian “Palafox” Palafox, who racked up two match MVP awards and a respectable 7.25 KDA (12/4/17).

There is every chance that CLG completely drops off in the coming weeks. Or maybe this is just the start of the greatest underdog story the LCS has ever seen…

CLG continue their season against the 1-2 FlyQuest on June 25.

Worst: TSM

Was TSM one of the teams over opening weekend? Going purely by results, no. They have a win, unlike the two teams below in the standings. However, TSM appear in this article because they should have done so much better.

In their opening match against 100 Thieves, TSM were winning for most of the 35-minute and 10-second game. They got first blood on a clean mid lane gank. They picked up the first two dragons of the game. At 28 minutes, they had a gold lead of approximately 3.6k. But it had been around the 23-minute mark when things started to turn for TSM. Edward “Tactical” Ra was caught out on a four-player collapse after taking 100 Thieves’ top lane tier two turret. At 26:17, TSM mid laner Huang “Maple” Yi-Tang killed 100 Thieves top laner Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho in what would be the last major event of the game for TSM. After that point, 100 Thieves steamrolled to a victory that came just under nine minutes later.

While TSM didn’t carry as substantial a lead in either of their other two matches during the weekend, it can be argued that this could have been a 3-0/2-1 weekend for TSM and they blew it.

It doesn’t get any easier for TSM, as their next match pits them against the 3-0 Team Liquid Honda.

LCS week 2

The LCS returns to a two-game-per-week format starting on June 25.

Header: LCS, Fragster