At the end of the first week of play in the LCS 2019 Spring Split, things look a lot like they did last summer. Team Liquid is dominating the top of the table, Cloud9 are right there behind them, and everyone else is trash.
Okay, that last part’s not exactly fair. Teams like Clutch Gaming and TSM can still make things interesting. To figure out where things stand after the first week of play, we had our writers rank each team from 1 point (worst) to 10 (best). This is how the power rankings turned out:
| Rank | Team | Points |
| 1) | Team Liquid | 60 |
| 2) | Cloud9 | 52 |
| 3) | Clutch Gaming | 49 |
| 4) | TSM | 41 |
| 5) | 100 Thieves | 36 |
| 6) | FlyQuest | 31 |
| 7) | OpTic Gaming | 24 |
| 8) | Echo Fox | 16 |
| 9) | Golden Guardians | 15 |
| 10) | CLG | 6 |
Let’s dive into each tier of teams and get a little more information.
Falling flat: Echo Fox, Golden Guardians, CLG
To be honest, we expected more from some of these teams this year. Golden Guardians signed a couple proven veterans in a bid to make the playoffs. Those veterans indeed played well, but the team’s young bot lane fell apart as they went 0-2.
One of those losses was to Echo Fox, and truth be told, neither team really looked impressive in that game. Echo Fox had jungler Lee “Rush” Yoon-Jae play Karthus in both games, and he didn’t look comfortable at all. Meanwhile, CLG tried two different junglers out and neither could save the team from falling behind 0-2.
This year isn’t looking good for any of these three teams.
Surprises all around: 100 Thieves, FlyQuest, OpTic Gaming
These three teams all surprised us in different ways. We wrote multiple times that 100 Thieves needed mid laner Choi “HuHi” Jae-hyun to play well this year. So far, that hasn’t happened, and the Thieves are surprisingly 0-2 on the season.
At the other end, both FlyQuest and OpTic have surprised us with good performances. OpTic had chances in both games and pulled out a win over CLG by relying on their Academy roster. FlyQuest proved that adding a consistent mid laner in Eugene “Pobelter” Park can make a huge difference for a team. Whether that can turn into playoff success remains a question, however.
In the hunt: Clutch Gaming, TSM
We wondered if TSM would have a bounce-back year after making some big changes. They still have things to work out, but they have Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, who’s still a beast in the mid lane. And new top laner Sergen “Broken Blade” Çelik looks like the real deal.
Clutch started hot as well, and while there are questions over how long that can last given top laner Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon’s history, this is still a welcome start for a team that struggled last summer. Seeing mid laner Tanner Damonte playing so well has to be good for their fans.
Championship material: Team Liquid, Cloud9
These two teams fought a tense, back-and-forth match in the first game of the year. Liquid emerged victorious via superior teamfighting and a draft that had Cloud9 on the back foot from the very beginning. It looks like we’re in for a year of these two heavyweights duking it out for regional superiority.
