Recapping NAL Stage 1

NAL Stage 1 concluded recently. For the first time, the Canadian and US Divisions came together. The established teams entered the race as favorites, but at the end, more underdogs than ever made it into the Top 4.

Unlike the 2020 season, the league featured a Round-Robin bracket. This obviously gave the teams way more play-time and the Best-of-One format made upsets happen. Stage 1 featured more than enough of those.

THE NEW FRONTRUNNERS

At the last two Major tournaments, Oxygen Esports made fourth place. While they did keep themselves in the Top 3, they never really made it past SSG and the rest. Now, they’re in first place of NAL and finally boast a league victory. This is a great sign, as most of the former Top 4 has virtually vanished.

In their place, we could now see Susquehanna Soniqs climb high. Seth “supr” Hoffman and his men have long waited for them moment, which has finally come. During this season, they have already bested Oxygen, Spacestation, and TSM.

After the sixth match day, Mirage and Disrupt were still located towards the bottom of the standings. Their last three matches lifted them into the Top 4, however. Mirage most recently scored an upset victory over Soniqs. Disrupt narrowly made it past TSM, which kicked the former favorites out of the Top 4 entirely.

THE BEST PLAYERS OF NAL

There’s been a lot of changes on the player leaderboard. Instead of Jason “Beaulo” Doty, we now see Pablo “Gryxr” Rebeil at the top. With his 1.33 rating, he was a deciding factor for the Susquehanna Soniqs. His 1.05 kills per round were massively above average. He was helped by Alexander “Yeti” Lawson, who also contributed lots of kills to NAL Stage 1. Only supr has really dropped the ball, but considering his colleagues’ performances, that’s not really an issue.

Matthew “Hotancold” Stevens is one of the few 2020 stars to still be going strong today. His departure from DarkZero has thrown the team back, but Mirage profit massively from this talented player. Now, Tyler “Ecl9pse” McMullin has to do the heavy lifting for DZ. While he absolutely smashes his job in that regard, his colleagues really can’t catch up. Matthew “Achieved” Solomon is the only TSM player to have made the Top 10.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER STAGE 1?

Even though Oxygen, Soniqs, Mirage, and Disrupt can be proud of themselves, their placements are only worth some prize money. The Major tournament that was originally scheduled to take place now has been cancelled. In its place, Ubisoft will hold the formerly postponed Six Invitational, but that event is still based on the Qualifiers from last year. Nonetheless, we finally got to see the new NAL teams perform. The old favorites have received a beating and will now try to get back on track. TSM, SSG, and DarkZero need to play catch-up again. They’ll have plenty of time until Stage 2, but the likes of Soniqs get equally as much time to become even stronger.