2022 LEC Spring Split Week 7 Day 1 Recap

The MVP is crowned. Battle between the worst teams turns out to be…exciting?! Vitality don’t even need to hit the nexus, while G2 definitely needed to.

XL vs MAD

The two-time reigning LEC champions need a miracle to get them into playoffs this time around as they get goomba-stomped by Excel, owing to massive performances from Finn and Patrik. The MAD Lions’ jungle/support duo that was so highly touted last year has yet to link up and find any meaningful advantages whilst Reeker continues to be a fly on the wall for most games. Kaiser had yet another bad game and it’s quite surprising that he’s having more and more of those this split than I have ever seen him have since his rookie days. Overall the Lions have been disappointing to say the least, but with two new rookies that need time to gel, I am not too worried about their chances once they figure their stuff out.

BlogOfLegends MVP: XL Finn (2)

Finn impressed with his signature Kled counterpick into Armut’s LEC-undefeated Aatrox, securing a solo-first blood and teleporting bot lane shortly after to pick off two kills and basically shut the Lions’ top laner out of the game for good. Finn has been hit or miss at best, and this is definitely his biggest hit of the season, as the Swedish top laner has a redeeming game on his signature champion to make up for that Irelia incident. Patrik also looked like his usual self with a dazzling solokill over UNFORGIVEN and being the reliable hypercarry that the Excel team is built around. With the Lions faltering to this level and Vitality’s slow start, Excel are on the verge of making organizational history and finally qualifying for playoffs.

AST vs BDS: Losing MVP FTW

The worst teams in the league clash in a reasonably epic game as Astralis are “knocked from playoffs contention!” and BDS secure their 4th win of what appears to be a heinous debut to the LEC franchise. xMatty continues his impressive campaign as being the worst player in the LEC currently as he picks up three free kills on Jinx in the early game but gets continuously picked off all throughout the game which gave Astralis more than one avenue back into the game. As a matter of fact, everybody on BDS did not play well today, and it was because of Astralis’ inability to properly turn from Barons that lost them the game.

BlogOfLegends MVP: AST Kobbe (1)

Kobbe picks up the first losing MVP of my Western LoL Recaps after quite the impressive performance on the Zeri. Despite his opposite number being so far ahead of him early, Kobbe was able to claw back the lead owing to great funneling by his team and the Danish ADC capitalized on it by turning around some of these fights for his team. Ultimately, his team’s indecision and lack of coordination is what shut the door at the potential comeback, but the combination of Kobbe’s play and the utter embarrassment that is BDS xMatty, he walks away with a deserved MVP for this game.

SK vs VIT

In all of my seven years of covering League of Legends esports, I don’t think I have ever seen minions end the game whilst the winning team gets aced. Vitality manage to pull out the win by running SK Gaming across the map with their intelligent crossmap play, ending in the weirdest climaxes I have ever seen. Very reminiscent of all the great Perkz teams in the past, the Western G.O.A.T used MVP Alphari as a pivot point to secure team gold to stay ahead of SK even though they were down 7-1 in kills at one point. Alphari’s Gangplank absolutely took Jenax’s Aatrox out of the game from laning phase and stayed strong the entire game to pull Vitality out of some nail-biting teamfights.

BlogOfLegends MVP: VIT Alphari (2)

SK’s engage prowess remains one of the best in the league with Gilius and Treatz, but they made the mistake of engaging too far ahead of their carries to the point where no follow up damage came through on those beautiful engagements. Many a times did Gilius run way too far ahead, only to realize his back line is still dealing with a Xin Zhao and a Gangplank. They seemed to have figured this problem out by their final teamfight; it was a beautiful trident engage from Jenax, Gilius and Treatz but alas the damage from Vitality’s crossmap turret taking had already been done. This team has shown a decent amount of promise and I cannot wait to see what they will show come summer split.

FNC vs RGE

In what really is the Match of the Week (FNC vs MAD, really?) Fnatic topple Rogue with amazing dual performances from both Razork and Upset. Fnatic jumped out to an early game lead owing the early dragon they were able to secure, and a result, the splitpush comp they drafted ran wild in the mid game, accruing gold advantages across the map. The combination of Humanoid’s signature Twisted Fate and Hyli’s Nautilus provided all the engage tools that FNC needed to accelerate and snuff out Rogue.

BlogOfLegends MVP: FNC Razork (2)

While the most heavily criticized member of Fnatic picks up the MVP for his dazzling Diana game, his counterpart struggled heavily with ill-advised invades and racking up deaths that pumped gold into the Fnatic carries. To no one’s surprise, Malrang seems to be getting weaker and weaker as teams become more and more aware of his high risk early game style, and without these cheese SoloQ ganks to power up Rogue, he was left running around like a chicken without a head. He was utterly disconnected from his team and it is obvious he still lacks the deep team coordination that is required to play out some of these closer fights. Still, it is only Rogue’s third loss of the split, and I am sure coach Fredy122 will definitely learn from this game to prepare them for the inevitable demon that is playoffs.

G2 vs MSF: All Hail the MVP

Alright… before y’all start getting on G2’s case, I would like to play Devil’s Advocate here. Many a times did I get ahead in SoloQ and ended up throwing the game because I underestimated how much work I had left to do and just bum-rushed the nexus over and over again, only to be repelled by the enemy team. Some of those games, I ended up losing and they still keep me awake at night. G2 just had one of those games – a game where the dismantled Misfits thoroughly but underestimated how much work they still had to do and start devolving into questionable engages and decision-making around doing damage to structures, especially by BrokenBlade, that handed them this extremely bitter loss.

BlogOfLegends MVP: MSF Vetheo (3)

What do you expect? The amount of ball it takes to proclaim yourself the MVP of an upcoming split when it’s only your third split is one thing, but actually managing to pull it off is another level of giga chad altogether. I seriously considered stopping the MVP tracking for the LEC this split after this game because, unless something heinous happens with Misfits, Vetheo pretty much guaranteed himself the 2022 LEC Spring Split MVP with this performance. In a performance that was very reminiscent of Bjergsen’s famous debut game on Akali, Vetheo completely annihilated G2 on every single one of their many missteps – I could tell just how many Chovy VODs he has been grinding, because his movement as well as the unholy speed of his combos was very reminiscent of the Uncrowned King himself. I have been keeping track of both the LEC and LCS in my blogs, and while I do not have every week chronicled, Vetheo is the first player to get to 3 MVP counts so far – and one can only guess he has many more in reserve before the season ends.