When you come at the king, you best not miss.
This weekend, Evil Geniuses and their young core were poised to go undefeated in the 2022 LCS Lock In tournament but ran into the explosive firepower of Team Liquid on the way to a 3-0 sweep. One of the biggest stories of the matchup sat in the mid lane, where legendary North American mid laner Bjergsen made his return to pro League of Legends play with an event-leading 15.6 KDA, according to Oracle’s Elixir.
The 25-year-old veteran collected the fourth-most kills in the entire tournament, with only eight total deaths over 13 games played. He also had the fourth-most assists at the event with 83 and was a part of 66.1 percent of his team’s total kills.
Many fans and analysts were a bit skeptical of Bjergsen’s return to pro play since he was coming off of a year-long break with TSM. He moved to a head coaching position for the 2021 season, but his team failed to win any LCS championships and missed out on Worlds 2021. As one of the older players in the league, pundits wondered if he was going to come back with the same all-star level of play.
In this Lock In tournament, Bjergsen needed some time to ramp up his play and warm up to competitive matches again. In fact, Liquid’s entire roster still looked like they needed some time to adjust to one another, apparent by their sloppy play through the knockout stage of the Lock In. They had to rely on some superhuman efforts from Bwipo to get to the finals, but once they got there, they seemed to be a completely different beast.
Specifically, Bjergsen looked a lot more confident and in tune with the other players on the team. He broke out Sylas twice during the series against EG and absolutely stomped the competition. And then he finished out game three with his patented Zilean pick. Next to stars like Hans Sama and Bwipo, Bjergsen’s leadership and game knowledge were on full display as they rocked EG’s young squad.
Many LCS fans will be curious to see if Liquid can run its full roster when the regular season begins since CoreJJ still hasn’t acquired his green card yet. As a result, Liquid can’t field all of the new players it acquired in the offseason. If this team looks this good with three different versions of its roster, who knows what heights they could reach with a consistent, star-studded cast of talent this season.
The 2022 LCS Spring Split begins on Saturday, Feb. 5.
