For the eighth season in a row, Team SoloMid will be making the trek to the finals to play for the North American League Championship. The demons of the past two splits were cleansed by TSM as the former three-time champion upended arch-nemesis Counter Logic Gaming in a one-sided sweep to make the finals. The win over CLG also confirmed TSM's placement at the World Championships, making it the sixth straight year the North American dynasty will battle for the game's greatest prize: the Summoner's Cup.
What SoloMid has done over the past four years is unmatched in the major regions of League of Legends. No, I'm not saying TSM could have reached the same milestones if it played in South Korea's LCK -- it couldn't; not even SKT T1 could make four straight finals -- but the consistent excellence of the organization needs to be recognized in its own right.
Eight finals.
Six World Championships.
After stripping the roster last season except for superstar Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg, TSM began a new era at the start of 2016. Even with a roster that looked amazing on paper, the team failed to come together in the spring split regular season, barely making the postseason in the sixth slot. TSM needed to battle through the quarterfinals and semifinals in upset efforts over Cloud9 and Immortals to make the finals, where the seven-time finalists ultimately fell to Counter Logic Gaming.
This season, armed with a green, rookie support in Vincent "Biofrost" Wang, the team that failed to trust each other for a majority of the spring split began functioning as a real team instead of a bunch of individual talents. TSM ran through the regular season with a remarkable 17-1 record and dispatched the club that had bested them in two straight finals, CLG, like it was nothing. Three straight blowouts with dominant laning phases amassing over 1,000 gold leads in the first ten minutes.
A victory at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto would be the perfect ending to the best season in the history of Team SoloMid.
Only problem? TSM's original rival Cloud9 has also returned to the top after going through inner changes throughout the year. When TSM and C9 clash in Toronto next Sunday night, it'll be the fifth time the two teams have faced off in the NA LCS finals. C9 won the first two in commanding 3-0 fashion, but TSM fought back in the latter half to tie up the record between the two clubs.
Either TSM will put its name in the record books as the one true king of North American League of Legends, having fended off both CLG and C9 in consecutive rounds. Or C9 -- now without longtime captain Hai "Hai" Lam -- will tie TSM's mark of three domestic titles and book a ticket to a fourth straight World Championship.
The Danish duel in the midlane between aces Bjergsen and C9's Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen. Another meeting between the United States' most accomplished AD carries in history with Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng and Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi. The black, white and grey of the TSM faithful and the bright blues of the C9 followers will converge in Canada in a few days time, and we'll find out which former champion organization has done the better job in rebuilding its roster from the ground up.
On the Aug. 28, the best-of-five between these two teams in the NA LCS Finals will finally come to an end.