Team SoloMid's Week 1 struggles have become tradition almost as old as the League of Legends itself. After the dust settled in Week 1 of the newly-franchised NA LCS, TSM finds itself 0-2.
TSM fans after seeing their performance this weekend pic.twitter.com/SV4BoO4dI9
— DBLTAP (@DBLTAPesports) January 22, 2018
Gloom and doom always follows TSM after any bad showing and that appears to be the same after the most recent Week 1 trouble. But if you look at the past year for TSM, this result is a familiar trend: A minor setback before the team dominates the NA LCS and there's a couple of reasons why.
To start, in the past two splits, TSM faced some of the toughest competition in the NA LCS in their first week of competition. In the spring and summer splits of last year, TSM ended the opening week 1-1 after facing Cloud9 and Immortals both times (losing to Cloud9 in the spring and Immortals in the summer). To put that into perspective, TSM lost to the teams that would eventually place second overall in the split in which they beat TSM. Who came out first in those two splits? TSM.
.@TeamLiquidLoL and @TeamSoloMid are locked in and on the rift for the opening game of the 2018 #NALCS Spring Split!
— lolesports (@lolesports) January 20, 2018
https://t.co/y9xd9HwcxK pic.twitter.com/NJOgGDt2HU
Now look at the teams TSM faced last week. Team Liquid and FlyQuest are rosters that on paper were set up to match up well against TSM. Team Liquid in particular had a man on a mission,
If we look back at Week 1s for TSM going back two splits we see that traditionally, Hauntzer simply hasn't played well. In his two 2017 spring split Week 1 matches, he combined for a KDA of 13/19/38. His two summer split Week 1 matches combined for a 6/13/15 stat line. Last week, his numbers mirrored this trend of previous performances as he had the worst KDA ratio among top laners in week 1. His numbers, however, tend to get better as the time progresses. Last year's spring split performance is a testament to that as he received more "Player of the Game" accolades than teammate
.@TLDoublelift gets the double kill as @TeamLiquidLoL extend their lead with a collapse in the bot lane! #NALCS pic.twitter.com/lHigbRrjHk
— lolesports (@lolesports) January 20, 2018
Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games