TD Garden was awash in the chants and enthusiasm yesterday, as Team SoloMid and Immortals squared off against each other for the title of NA LCS Summer Champion. In keeping with the established script, it was TSM that would emerge victorious in a 3-1 bo5 series.
NA LCS Summer 2017 Champions: Team SoloMid
This is the third Split Championship in a row for TSM, after the same roster won Summer 2016, and the team clinched Spring 2017 with WildTurtle replacing Doublelift during his break. It also marks their sixth NA LCS championship title. There are only two other teams with split championships to their name, and that’s Counter Logic Gaming and Cloud9, with two championships each.
The accolades don’t stop there. TSM’s midlaner Bjergsen also won Split MVP for Summer 2017, his fourth time earning the title. Nobody else has won Split MVP more than once. Bjergsen’s influence and dominance in the region have made him the most decorated player in North America.
But it was a team effort that earned them the championship against Immortals yesterday. Although the general consensus was that Immortals were the underdogs in the match up, they took TSM to the floor in many of the matches. The fourth and final game was even 10K gold in their favor at one point, before a series of incredible team fights from TSM, as well as neutral objective control, shifted the tides of battle.
.@TeamSoloMid win game four and the series! #NALCS pic.twitter.com/zOUsthnPpK
— lolesports (@lolesports) September 3, 2017
And while all the players were showered with praise following the match, Biofrost appeared as the dark horse of the roster. He played Rakan in three of the four games against IMT (it was banned away by IMT in game 3), and his playmaking and engages were the backbone of TSM’s success.
With the regular season and playoffs now officially complete, teams and fans turn their eyes to the global stage. The biggest League of Legends event of the year begins September 23rd, and is set to take place in four different locations across China. Both TSM and Immortals have secured their positions in the tournament as North America’s #1 and #2 seeds, respectively. FlyQuest, Team Dignitas, Counter Logic Gaming, and Cloud9 all have a shot at making it through the regional qualifier, a gauntlet-style bo5 tournament that takes place this weekend.