Although it’s too early to feel out how the split might end up, it’s not too early to recognize some interesting trends and surprises that some of the teams have shown early.
North America seems to be more balanced this split than it has been in the past, having no winless teams and no teams undefeated with the majority at 2-2. With the addition of two more teams, we're set to have a more competitive season especially with the automatic relegation of the 10th place team. The even skill of the teams in the league this year is further shown in the fan voting. The two largest margins so far were Cloud 9 favored over Gravity with 91.53% of the vote and TSM over Team 8 with 91.29% of the vote both in Week 1 Day 2. Both of those votes were wrong. In all 20 games played so far, the fan vote where both teams had at least 40% of the vote amounted to nine games, showing equality in both the fans and expectations for all of the teams.
As it stands, the league has three teams at 3-1: CLG, Gravity, and TSM. Following them are four teams tied at 2-2: Team 8, Impulse, Liquid, and Winterfox. Trailing in last place but by no means far out at 1-3 are: Cloud 9, Coast, and Dignitas. In this article we’re going to analyze a few of the more surprising teams either for their great performance or worrying performance.
CLG (3-1)
One of the most powerful teams in the league right now is CLG and their play has shown consistency throughout the split. In the week 2 games, they had a 4.8k lead against Impulse at 20 minutes and a 3.5k lead against Cloud 9 in the same time. These are no easy tasks and CLG was able to snowball their start to push for victories relatively quickly. Aphromoo’s Blitzcrank is going to start pulling bans from other teams allowing them more freedom of choices at other lanes. ZionSpartan also returned to the lineup after his initial ban, bringing even more talent and consistency to the team. Additionally the team will be getting Scarra back after week 3 for champion select and planning as a head coach after his ban is done. With Doublelift being capable on most any ADC, and Link showing his prowess with mid laners like Cassiopia, you can expect target bans which will leave champions like Jarvan IV and Gnar open for their taking.
Team 8 (2-2)
Having one of the more difficult schedules in the split so far with a combined opponent record of 9-7, they still have managed even so far and have taken a win off of TSM. What gets them on the list is the ability to stay in the game, the long win against Coast was a big deal and showed they didn’t lose confidence and didn’t take themselves out of the game. One of their losses was to CLG, arguably the best team in North American and they kept the gold even in that one until 23 minutes. Further, Team 8’s loss to Impulse was extremely close, Team 8 never was trailing by 5k or more. The ability to stay close in games and keep up really well with their competition makes Team 8 a team to be reckoned with. Also top laner CaliTrlolz has proven to be a capable top laner who’s yet to play the same champion twice so far this split.
Cloud 9 (1-3)
Likely much ado about nothing here, but still it isn’t normal for the North American split to start with Cloud 9 struggling. While it’s not necessarily anything to be concerned about just yet, it’s certainly worth monitoring going forward. The good news with this is that Cloud 9 has had by far the most difficult schedule of any team with their four opponents records totaling 11/5. They’ve dropped one game to each of the 3-1 teams so far and took their only victory over Liquid in convincing fashion, a 15 to 3 kill bloodbath where Liquid only took four towers and no other objectives. They haven’t been particularly good at controlling their early game and have trailed at 20 minutes in all three of their losses, admittedly close in the TSM game and near even in the Gravity game. I suspect we’ll see Cloud 9 really step their game up into week 3 and continuing throughout the split, facing off against Team 8 and Coast this week, making them a great candidate for a two win week. Many of the Cloud 9 problems have come from their solo laners not performing as their expected, so if Hai and Balls are able to fix their issues with mechanics and coordination, Cloud 9 should be back on top before long.
Team Dignitas (1-3)
Surprisingly Team Dignitas finds themselves on this list. While the veteran team is only 1-3, that wasn’t enough to peg them as a surprise. They certainly had low expectations of them coming into this split after losing the majority of the players that made the team’s identity. Already struggling at the bottom of the standings, their main shotcaller and last remaining player from the golden days of Dignitas Crumbzz stepped down from the roster.
I see this as the final nail in the Dignitas coffin and believe there is about a 80-90% chance that Dignitas be relegated. Assuming that happens the team may even disband, making them a prime example of how recruiting high skill Korean players can actually make your team worse from communication issues and personality clashes. In my power rankings which will be released in formality next week have Dignitas in 10th place, my how the mighty have fallen. I’m not sure that there is any realistic way to turn this team around and going to reddit and the public to try and recruit a coach is certainly not the way they want to operate. Most candidates will likely see this position as a 6 week temporary position before relegation. With even their owner not knowing the permanent solution to their problems, look for Dignitas to go 0-2 this week and likely not winning five games in total this split.
These are the early impressions we’ve gotten so far from the split. There’s still so much time left and a lot can change, we’ve seen teams start great and then struggle down the stretch as well as teams off to a slow start then pick it up mid season. I expect similar ebbs and flows in the tide of the split for NA this year. Stay around for next week's power rankings and state of the league after the first trimester of the year is behind us.
