Team Solo Mid rings true to its name as Bjergsen had to hard carry his team into the playoffs. When it mattered most he managed to put everyone on his back with an exceptional 14-1-5 performance on Akali to snag the last playoff spot.
Although it has been quite a rough season for TSM so far, most people were still expecting the team to grab a playoffs spot for themselves, cause you know, it’s TSM. It’s the team that’s always in the playoffs so it would just make sense. Although we now know that it has become a reality, the team was really close to losing their spot entirely, which would mark the first time that the team wouldn’t make playoffs.
TSM has shown a lot of trouble adapting to patches, not just this season but almost always, which is a pretty glaring weakness when the meta changes every 2 weeks. Furthermore, TSM is notorious for its passive play, with the team often losing without really doing anything to change that. TSM also aimed to have a more dominating bot lane this season by important Zven and Mithy but they have not made as big of a splash as people thought they would.
However, in their match versus Team Liquid, none of that mattered. Team Liquid is easily the strongest team in NA right now so beating them is no easy feat. Although the team usually likes to avoid risk at any cost, they surprised everyone by putting their star player on a carry mid laner. As we all know by now, Bjergsen had something to prove and played probably his best game all split.
Seeing Bjergsen completely demolish the enemy on a carry certainly feels fantastic. He became famous for his aggressive carry-style of play but has slowly dwindled into becoming more of a passive utility player. Hopefully, TSM will stick with putting him on carries throughout the playoffs so that we actually see some exciting games from the team instead of them just rolling over and losing.
With their win, TSM has secured a playoffs spot but is tied for 3rd together with 3 other teams, Echo Fox, Flyquest, and 100 Thieves. This means that later today we will see them fight off in a tiebreaker in order to determine in which places the teams will be seeded for the playoffs. The first match will start off with Echo Fox versus TSM so we can see right away if TSM’s victory was deserved or a fluke.
