Las Vegas Legion to Sign Standy before CDL Stage 4
| Tags: Call of Duty
| Author Bence Loksa
The team of the Neon City has seen an opportunity in Standy leaving Toronto Ultra, and they didn’t want to miss out on it.
Former Minnesota Roekkr and Toronto Ultra player, Eli “Standy” Bentz seems to have found a forever home as Las Vegas Legion just announced that they are working on signing the young player. Legion announced on Twitter that they are currently awaiting CDL approval for the transfer but welcomed Standy to their ranks.
Welcome to the Neon Capital @Staaandy 🌆
*pending League Approval"#LVLup #NoFleursGiven #CDL2023 pic.twitter.com/NiC3b2xNgg
— Vegas Legion (@LasVegasLegion) March 24, 2023
The journey of Standy and Toronto Ultra has officially come to an end a few days ago, but the 21-year-old has been on the bench of the Canadian team since the start of the Stage 3 Major Qualifiers. Standy has played for various Challenger level teams before a longer period at Triumph, where he won multiple Challenger events and the 2020 CDC North American Finals. He began his Call of Duty League career with Minnesota Roekkr, finding a certain amount of success before writing history at the Black Ops Cold War era Stage 5 Major: in the finals against Toronto Ultra, Roekkr were down by four points, but they managed to claw themselves back from the grave and reverse sweep their opponents, making the whole of Arlington Arena shout their names.
Afterwards, however, Standy didn’t find much success, and after a mediocre 2022 Season, he left Minnesota to join Ultra. While he started out fine, his performance wasn’t living up to Toronto’s expectations, so they benched the young SMG-player, bringing in Charlie “Hicksy” Hicks in his place. With the new addition, Ultra started to play better, managing to secure 3rd place in the Major 3 Qualifiers, then going undefeated in the Major, beating OpTic Texas on their home turf 4-2, in a series that wasn’t particularly difficult for the Canadians. This ultimately proved that benching Standy was the right call, but it was still sad to see such a young talent underutilized.
The future of Standy
Standy wasn’t just sitting idly though: he joined Challenger team OMiT to compete in the CDC. He teamed up with John-Alexander “Flames” Dieguez, Elliot “WarDy” Ward and Cryptic, with whom he played in the CDC NA 2023 Cup 7# and the CDC Texas Open. While they had some nice moments, OMiT only finished in the top 16 both times.
But Standy will be returning to the Call of Duty League as a player for the Las Vegas Legion, alongside Donovan “Temp” Laroda, Thomas “TJHaLy” Haly and GOAT-candidate James “Clayster” Eubanks, in a team which needs the skills of the young SMG-player. The them which recently “moved” from Paris to Las Vegas still isn’t doing very well. While the addition of Clayster to the squad certainly helped, the Legion is still a bottom of the leaderboard team. They had 2 top 6 finishes in the first and third CDL Majors this season, so there’s definitely some potential and an amount of hope, but LVL still has a long way to go until they can be considered as contenders.
Wanna give a massive shoutout to Brendan @MG2ReaL for coming in and helping us succeed as best we could in Stage 3. I hope this stint helped prove to everyone he deserves to be in the league and he has what it takes to elevate teams. Was a pleasure doing some historic shit w/ u🤝
— Clayster (@Clayster) March 24, 2023
Standy has a few days left to get familiar with his new teammates and the strategies of Las Vegas Legion, as on the 31st of March, the Call of Duty League Stage 3 Major Qualifiers kick off! Follow Standy and LVL in their run, and don’t forget to check out ESTNN for the latest CDL news!