League of Legends LCS: Free Agency Frenzy Day 3 Roundup

Los Angeles, USA – July 21: — during the 2019 League of Legends Championship Series Week 7 at the LCS Arena on July 21, 2019 in Los Angeles, California, USA. (Photo by Paul de Leon/Riot Games) /

Day 2 of free agency in the LCS may have been relatively quiet, but Day 3 saw a ton of unexpected League of Legends transactions!

And here I thought there were going to be days more like the second day of free agency rather than the first. After a flurry of activity to kick off the offseason, the LCS signings died down on Day 2 only to pick right back up on Day 3. With a bunch of North American League of Legends teams and players making moves, here’s how everyone did.

Golden Guardians acquire Closer

Following a new trend of bringing in overlooked talent from minor regions, Golden Guardians have elected to bring in former TCL MVP and Royal Youth jungler Can “Closer” Çelik.

Grade: B-

Closer certainly put up some monster numbers in the TCL, leading to his deserved MVP award. However, at Worlds Closer was, frankly, outclassed by some very middling talent. His 2.6 KDA, 305 GPM, 1.37 VSPM, and 2.9 deaths per game were all worse than junglers like Canyon (not surprising), Xerxe (also not surprising), Lira, and even Shrimp.

Those last two were basically cast off from the LCS in recent years for not being up to snuff, but they both proved to be ahead of Closer. Maybe GGS is taking a shot and hoping they can groom his talent but thus far I wouldn’t count on him to be the answer and replace Contractz.

Immortals acquire Altec, Hakuho, and SOAZ

Immortals continue to build their brand new roster by adding Johnny “Altec” Ru, former Echo Fox support Nickolas “Hakuho” Surgent, and spending an import slot on famed Fnatic (and more recently Misfits) top laner Paul “sOAZ” Boyer.

Altec Grade: D
Hakuho Grade: B+
SOAZ grade: C

We’ll get the good out of the way for Immortals first. I really like them going after, in my opinion, one of the best domestic supports in North America. Despite being paired with young and plain bad AD Carries in 2019, Hakuho still managed to rank in the middle of the pack statistically.

Taking a chance on Altec, a guy who hasn’t played professionally in over a year, to be his partner is another story. Altec is not coming into this situation like a FORG1VEN, a famed mechanical god who stepped away for reasons not related to his play. Altec didn’t play in 2019 because most observers didn’t think his talent level was up to snuff and thus passed him over, so bringing him in is a risk to put it mildly.

Finally, there’s SOAZ a historically great top laner who has shown to have a steady decline in recent years, to the point that he was basically replaced by a rookie in Danny “Dan Dan” Le Comte. His performance last year with Misfits was uneven, to put it generously, and I don’t know if it’s worth taking the risk that another change of scenery will cause him to reclaim his glory days.

CLG acquires Crown

Looking to make an upgrade, CLG acquired former OpTic mid laner (and former World Champion) Lee “Crown” Min-ho.

Grade: A-

From a pure value standpoint, Crown is absolutely an upgrade over CLG’s mid laner Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage. While I personally think PoE was underrated for most of the year, there is no doubt that Crown was one of the best players in the LCS. Given the quality of teammates around him, I had him as a contender for the LCS MVP in Summer so it will be interesting to see him paired with CLG’s jungler Raymond “Wiggily” Griffin in what could contend for the strongest mid/jungle duo in the league.

Next. Grading Day 2 of the LCS free agency. dark

Evil Geniuses acquire Bang

In one of the bigger shock moves of the offseason thus far, 100 Thieves agreed to trade ADC and former World Champion Bae “Bang” Jun-sik to Evil Geniuses.

Grade: A-

For a brand new team to the LCS, Evil Geniuses are definitely showing that they’re not afraid to get into the free agency mix. After trading to acquire Svenskeren and Zeyzal, they’ve now added Bang to their roster.

Although his team struggled mightily during the 2019 season, Bang was the lone bright spot for Evil Geniuses, putting up monstrous numbers despite being paired with one of the worst LCS supports in Aphromoo. It’s certainly no stretch to think that, paired with Zeyzal, this bot lane duo could easily step up to Doublelift and CoreJJ.

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