League of Legends LCS: breaking down all the offseason roster rumors
By Josh Tyler
Lost and Diamond to Immortals
Again, this could be part of that big roster shuffle for Immortals Travis was discussing. Former Echo Fox ADC Lawrence “Lost” Sze Yuy Hui and Cloud9 Academy support David “Diamond” Bérubé would come to Immortals and likely push out their starting duo of Noh “Arrow” Dong-hyeon and Terry “BIG” Chuong.
Winners: Lost and Diamond, who would get their shot on the LCS stage. Both have gotten a taste of pro play before, but Travis’s statements made it seem as though they would be brought in to be the full-time starters.
Losers: Immortals because, if the Dardoch rumor is also true, I could see this being disastrous for this team. Not to mention Immortals already has a fantastic bot lane duo of Arrow/BIG.
Cloud9/Evil Geniuses swap
It was initially reported by ESPN’s Jacob Wolf that Cloud9 would be selling C9 Academy players Ziqing “Kumo” Zhao and Matthew “Deftly” Chen along with starters Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam and Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen. However, Travis has now reported that the swap may be on hold.
Winners: EG wins handily, as they not only acquire four out of five players for their starting roster (all of them being NA natives/residents), they’re getting the reigning LCS MVP in Svenskeren. For Cloud9, this is also a win because they clearly feel that there is enough talent in their Academy roster to replace Sven and Zeyzal, and they’re probably right that Kumo and Deftly were going to be blocked by existing LCS talent on their roster.
Losers: Teams who might have been in on acquiring Svenskeren. It was no secret from the start of the offseason that C9 was going to try and move him because of how much they (rightly) believe in Blaber as their starter. Teams like TSM would have moved mountains to get Svenskeren on their team.
Ssumday to Evil Geniuses
According to Travis, with the addition of new GM PapaSmithy and coach Zikz the 100 Thieves organization will be attempting to go in a younger, cheaper direction and attempt to develop North American talent. To that end, they would likely part ways with one of their most expensive roster pieces, top laner Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho. Additionally, Travis said that this discussion fell apart once the C9/EG swap materialized, but perhaps this is causing the rumored hold to that swap.
Winners: Evil Geniuses. If they manage to pull this off in conjunction with the C9 swap, they might have a potential starting lineup of Ssumday/Svenskeren/???/Deftly/Zeyzal with an import slot still available to acquire a mid laner. That’s a playoff-caliber team, easily.
Losers: Potentially Ssumday if that swap does not materialize, as he might be the sole carry asset on a terrible team like he was with 100 Thieves. EG might also be the losers if getting Ssumday causes them to lose out on Sven/Zeyzal/Deftly. Sven alone is more valuable to them than Ssumday.