It looks 19-year-old Seo “Kanavi” Jin-hyeok will be JD Gaming’s starting jungler next year. The League of Legends team officially announced his return to its starting lineup on Weibo today.
Over the past few weeks, Kanavi has been in the middle of a controversy regarding his former team, Griffin. According to Riot Games, the young jungler was forced to sign a contract while he was still a minor without the consent of a legal representative, which is against Riot’s rules and regulations.
Kanavi was also allegedly pressured by former Griffin director Cho Gyu-Nam to accept JD Gaming’s proposal. Griffin’s law firm, VEAT, signed the contract for Kanavi and claimed itself to be his legal representative. Griffin has been under scrutiny since reports surfaced earlier this month about Kanavi’s contract stipulations, as well as reports saying that coach Kim “cvMax” Dae-Ho verbally and physically abused some of his players.
On Summoner’s Rift, Kanavi only played 10 games for JDG last split and had a 30-percent win rate with the team. He had a 2.4 kill-death ratio and an impressive 74.6 kill participation percentage. He’s still young, but he has plenty of potential as a growing jungler in the best region in the world.
Some League fans will be excited to see Kanavi play a full season with JDG since he never truly got to stretch his wings while on loan from Griffin. He’ll be a player to watch for LPL fans next year.
