Every LCS team has three games left to play and only two are qualified for playoffs thus far. Even TSM, after their abysmal start, still have a chance of making it.
Reverse standings order this time.
Let's get it.
**10. TSM 4-11**
Believe it or not, there is one remarkably convoluted scenario in which TSM make playoffs after winning two tiebreaker matches, essentially going on a miraculous seven-game win streak along with a lot of other things happening that are well outside of their control.
Seven games because they won both of their matches this past week. This includes one of the least-hyped Cloud9 versus TSM games in LCS history due to their mismatched winrates going into it and what probably should have been an Immortals win if they had snowballed their ridiculous gold lead.
At the beginning of the split, I was hyped about TSM in potential: an LPL-lite squad that made the most of 2021 MVP jungler Mingyi "Spica" Lu and the aggressive initiations of former FunPlus Phoenix Blaze support Wei "Shenyi" Zi-Jie. This was dashed after the first few weeks with the first substitution and quickly was forgotten as TSM languished at the bottom of the standings. The main difference this past weekend, their first 2-0 week, was actual coordination between Spica and Shenyi, and additionally the way that the team played around bot laner Edward "Tactical" Ra, who managed to grab his own lane advantages at times based on the wave state.
**9. Immortals 4-11**
While Immortals seemingly haven't had as many fires to put out as TSM, they've still dealt with some shake-ups and the team's continued lackluster performances.
Their match against TSM in particular stands out as a low point. In previous matches that Immortals threw, it was easy to see a certain breaking point: the team would simply make a call, but miss the timing or have a split call, or one spectacular teamfight would spell their doom. In their match against TSM, they get an early lead off of a Nautilus level one and quickly use Cassiopeia's early priority to kill Spica at his own red buff.
And then just don't…snowball it. They don't push forward or pressure much, almost acting like it's TSM in the driver's seat for the early game and not the team that had a 2K gold lead at eight minutes.
It's frustrating for many reasons. Many had pegged this team, due to the names on paper, to potentially be one of the squads that could break into the expected top five given another team's catastrophic collapse compared to expectations. Instead, it's Immortals who have fizzled and remained at the bottom of the standings.
**8. CLG 5-10**
CLG have an outside chance of making playoffs, although it's slimmer than the 7-8 pack of Dignitas, Evil Geniuses, and Golden Guardians ahead of them in the standings.
Unlike TSM or C9 or other teams doing a full rebuild, CLG actually did a top-down house cleaning of not only players but staff and coaches as well. They made it clear that their goals were development focused first, and I think that's been reflected well in this CLG team, which have shown improvement together.
I weirdly think it takes a lot of guts to not publicly state that your goal is to win the LCS, or make it to Worlds, or some other expected goal, especially when all anyone can say about your organization sometimes is how if they finish in bottom two they could potentially be removed from the LCS entirely. I've been on some really bad sports teams when I was back in school, and trust me when I say that no one wants to lose. Even if you know you're vastly outmatched by your opponent, there's a moment right before the game starts where you think to yourself that maybe you'll be able to pull it off. And CLG have pulled it off. Perhaps more importantly (for me as a viewer and analyst anyway) they've pulled it off in fun ways that showcase the growth of their players as a team.
**7. Golden Guardians 7-8**
When Golden Guardians are on, they're the team I've waxed poetic about how you can dig into any one of their games and find something they've obviously worked on from mistakes in their last. When they're off, they're throwing 10K gold leads to 100 Thieves and not touching side waves for double-digit minutes.
I unironically love Golden Guardians for this, even if it also makes them a bit infuriating sometimes.
Now that it's time to make a final push for playoffs, Golden Guardians have to play Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, and Immortals. This is the schedule that gave them a 2-1 record last super week, which would go a long way towards securing a playoff spot here especially if one of the teams they beat is Evil Geniuses, keeping EG from having the head-to-head record in case of tiebreakers.
**6. Evil Geniuses 7-8**
Last week I wrote a bit about Evil Geniuses' drafting and, while I didn't particularly love their drafts at times, they also weren't solely responsible for EG's losses. A lot of it comes down to execution, and even in their losses, EG still do some things I like (for example, not always hard-contesting Rift Herald I promise various teams around the world sometimes it's better to trade for bot plates or some other gains on the map I promise).
This week, I'm looking at the schedule that EG has in front of them and saying that they'll probably make playoffs, but I have no idea what will happen after that.
In their games against Dignitas and 100 Thieves, Evil Genuises jungler Kacper "Inspired" Słoma looked more coordinated and in tune with his lanes early on, something I've previously criticized him for, not only on EG but on Rogue as well. I think the EG team works best when Inspired is either in his lanes more often early, or wrecking the opposing jungler through counterjungling if EG have picked more pushing lanes. Inspired joining up with support Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme on roams and helping either Joseph "jojopyun" Joon Pyun in the mid lane or Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki in the bot lane has been EG's best form.
**5. Dignitas 7-8**
There are many ways to illustrate that Kim "River" Dong-woo is good which are not limited to his actual pathing in certain games or his Champion Queue highlights.
Here's another illustration: River's teams have not missed playoff qualification since he was called "Baby" and was playing in the 2019 Spring LJL Promotion Qualifier, back in the autumn of 2018.
That being said, things aren't looking clear for a Dignitas playoff run giving the tough schedule they have in front of them, facing all of the LCS' top teams in Cloud9, Team Liquid, and 100 Thieves. If you cast your thoughts back to the last super week when they faced the same run of teams, they narrowly avoided going winless all three games due to a narrow, volatile victory against 100 Thieves that Sunday.
Fortunately for Dignitas, they seem to have an oddly-favorable matchup against 100 Thieves, most likely due to how they like to play around their strong bottom lane in Toàn "Neo" Trần and Vincent "Biofrost" Wang. It was Dignitas who first upset 100 Thieves in Lock In, countering their pushing Caitlyn/Lux lane with Ezreal/Karma and River's jungle attention. If Dignitas want to defy expectations, they'll have to somehow pull this off again, this time with all three top teams knowing exactly how they like to play.
**4. FlyQuest 8-7**
I will credit FlyQuest again and again for having oddly cool heads under pressure. Whether it's the veteran presence of Zaqueri "aphromoo" Black, or mid laner Loïc "toucouille" Dubois' assertion that any success they've had is due to how well they get along as five individuals, FlyQuest once again showcased their tenacity against Team Liquid, stalling out the game long enough for a victory, led by toucouille's Veigar and bot laner Johnson "Johnsun" Nguyen's Tristana-into-Zeri pick.
The FlyQuest team has been upfront about how much they've been set back by having to play from home these past few weeks, which slowed any small momentum they had been able to gain. FlyQuest have a middling schedule, facing Immortals, Evil Geniuses, and ending on Cloud9, but went 0-3 with this schedule the last time super week rolled around.
**3. 100 Thieves 10-5**
Although the dread spectre of their match against Golden Guardians still lingers in my mind (and possibly the minds of the 100 Thieves players and coaching staff members) 100 Thieves did pull away from the rest of the pack this week with wins over Immortals and Evil Geniuses, and are nearly guaranteed for playoffs save losing all of their games, plus a miracle Dignitas run plus 3-0s from either Golden Guardians or Evil Geniuses. Essentially, 100 Thieves' chances of missing playoffs are about as likely as TSM making them.
When the split started, I talked about how 100 Thieves were defending champions, and even when they unexpectedly lost to Dignitas in Lock In, I was still thinking of them as a top team. Yet, they've had a lot of issues this past split, which has led to an interesting shift in team focus: from pushing bot lanes to jungler Can "Closer" Çelik focusing much more on the top side of the map, and the team relying on Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho far more than last year. (As an aside, this has put Milan "Tenacity" Oleksij in an awkward bench position, considering that he was presumably brought up to play more carry-oriented champions, but has yet to play, save one Kennen performance in Lock In.)
If they are to contend for another LCS title, they still have some work to do. And if that sounds too harsh compared to standards set for other teams, it's because they're defending champions and they have set this standard themselves.
**2. Team Liquid 11-4**
Both top LCS teams dropped games this past weekend. Cloud9 to TSM, and Team Liquid to FlyQuest, leading LCS fans to bemoan the state of a league where "everyone can beat everyone."
First of all, in a single game round robin, everyone can always beat everyone. All it takes is one off day, an atrocious unexecutable draft, et. cetera. Take heart, at least it's not as volatile as the LPL where everyone has been beating up on each other in best-of-threes.
Jokes aside, their loss to FlyQuest is a single game loss where it was still readily apparent that they knew what their composition needed to do in order to snowball early and get ahead. A few mid-game fights go slightly differently and TL closes this out before FlyQuest is able to scale and use their dragon stacking as a way of stalling out the game further. Multiple TL players have come out and said that they feel like they can play through any lane so I actually like that they're trying to stretch and see the potential of their own flexibility as a team. Like Cloud9, I don't think this is a team where we've seen close to what they're capable of, although the two teams' respective makeups are quite different.
**1. Cloud9 12-3**
Prior to their match against TSM this past weekend, Cloud9 jungler Robert "Blaber" Huang reminisced to us about C9's last match against TSM this year. Then, C9 had been experiencing their own coaching turmoil, and ended up beating TSM in a game where their scaling composition fell significantly far behind early due to repeated bot side ganks onto Kim "Berserker" Min-cheol's Karthus. It was a clutch Baron steal from Blaber that kept them in the game, eventually allowing them to turn the tide and scale to victory.
This time, TSM took that win. Top laner Park "Summit" Woo-tae was made to look mortal (on Gnar no less).
Cloud9 recovered well in their next game against CLG with Blaber, alongside support Kim "Winsome" Dong-keon, securing jungle control from the start. This adjustment more than anything (much like what I said about Summit's better communication with his team last week) is what continues to give me hope about the strength of this team in upcoming best-of-fives: the fact that they're already this good, and still learning how to coordinate better. This means that some of their wins still might come from ridiculous individual mechanical outplays, but you can easily see how these five have improved as a team from the start of the split until now.
