The Off-season Scramble

By William Dinh

Now that Worlds has ended, the preseason has started and there’s so many things going on inside and outside of the game. For today, we’ll talk about the things happening outside of the game. Specifically, we’ll be focusing on teams in North America. The professional scene for the NALCS has moved towards a member organization structure for 2018. This was mentioned back in an article in September by Bear Schmiedicker and Chris Greeley, which stated these reasons:

·        It eliminates the uncertainty of relegation, which means that organizations and sponsors can take longer-term bets and unlock deeper investment

·        It creates opportunities for teams and pros to share in the upside of the league long-term by creating and sharing in league-based revenue

·        It creates a league in which pros feel the benefits of a stable NA LCS with a larger voice and better protections

Thinking about this, every season for professional play had relegations where teams in the Challenger scene could battle their way against the bottom NA LCS teams to win their spot. Within the reasons stated above, not having relegations meant that new teams won’t be entering. What about existing teams? The existing teams would have to go through a few different phases before they're accepted into the NA LCS. Through Riot's processes, the 10 teams have already been announced weeks ago. This brings up the question of what happens to the players on teams that weren’t accepted. According to the same article:

“They will have the opportunity to sell those contracts to teams that are entering the league or remaining in the league (or to international teams), or they can release their players into free agency. New and remaining teams will be able to buy these contracts or sign new players starting at the opening of the free agency signing window on November 21, 2017.”

Let’s look at the teams that have been accepted into the NA LCS. These teams have previously participated in the NA LCS during Spring and Summer 2017.

TSM

Cloud 9

Counter Logic Gaming

Echo Fox

Team Liquid

The new teams that were accepted in are. Three of the four new teams most people would know because of the NBA: Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Golden Guardians (GSW)

Clutch Gaming  (HOU)

100 Thieves (CLE)

Optic Gaming

This means that the teams that weren’t accepted who were in the NA LCS during 2017 are:

Immortals

Phoenix1

Team Envy

Dignitas

All four Challenger teams

As mentioned earlier, each of those teams can sell the contracts of their players or release them into free agency. Here’s a look at some of the free agents that played in the NA LCS last year sorted by their positions. An important note to keep in mind, not all of the free agents are a result of their teams not getting accepted into the NA LCS (e.g. Hai and Impact). I also listed their previous team in parenthesis.

Top Lane:

Impact (Cloud9)

Flame (Immortals)

Ssumday (Dignitas)

Balls (FlyQuest)

Zig (Phoenix1)

Looper (Echo Fox)

Jungle:

Meteos (Phoenix1)

MikeYeung (Phoenix1)

Moon (FlyQuest)

Mid:

Froggen (Echo Fox)

Hai (FlyQuest)

Ryu (Phoenix1)

Pirean (Phoenix1)

ADC:

Piglet (Team Liquid)

Arrow (Phoenix1)

Keith (Echo Fox)

Support:

Aphromoo (CLG)

Olleh (Immortals)

LemonNation (FlyQuest)

Xpecial (Phoenix1)

Some other notable rumors that have gone on this past weekend is the results of the other players on Immortals having their contracts bought out by Team Liquid. The players that had their contracts bought out were: Xmithie (Jungle), Pobelter (Mid), Cody Sun (ADC), AnDa (Jungle-Sub). Stunt (Support-Sub) also had his contract bought out by a different team, FlyQuest. With the introduction of franchising, there are a lot of free agents this offseason for teams to recruit. There’s even some rumors of players from the EU LCS joining NA teams. For example, Zven (ADC) and Mithy (Support) from EU LCS’s G2 is rumored to join TSM. Of course, having players come from different regions isn't new for both NA and EU LCS.

Overall, there seems to be plenty of other players that are team-less right now. Whether or not they become a free agent depends if their previous teams sold their contracts or allows them to go out into free agency. It should be a very eventful off-season! It’ll also be interesting to look at where they all end up, since the four new teams do not have any players rumored to be picked up yet (20 roster spots still open). I’m hoping it’ll be as exciting as the NBA off-season was! Will the NA LCS get any crazy signings like Carmelo Anthony and Paul George joining the Thunder? What about Kyrie being traded to Boston Celtics?  Chris Paul to the Houston Rockets? Who knows! All I know is that fan should keep an eye out and that free agency essentially starts tomorrow: November 21, 2017.