TSM LCS Preview Summer Split 2022

After the worst split of the organization's history, TSM is ready to bounce back. Read why in our TSM LCS Preview.

TSM’s history is filled with successes, and they’ve always been at the top of LCS. Then the last year happened. After losing their franchise player and then head coach Søren ‘Bjergsen’ Bjerg to TL, the team went into a small rebuild. They brought two young prospects from China’s LDL in Zhu ‘Keaiduo’ Xiong and Wei ‘Shenyi’ Zi-Jie, but it didn’t go as they expected.

TSM Summer 2022 Roster

• Heo ‘Huni' Seung-hoon
• Mingyi ‘Spica' Lu
• Huang ‘Maple' Yi-Tang
• Edward ‘Tactical' Ra
• Wei ‘Shenyi' Zi-Jie

Keaiduo who was hyped up as a future star but ready to compete at the moment was criticized heavily due to his play. In most games, he was mainly focused on his lane probably to the detriment of his team as it is hard to play with a stationary mid in this meta. Shenyi also had his own share of problems. He started out seeming way out of touch with what the rest of the team wanted, then got benched and his communications got leaked, which created a big drama around the team. We also later learned that the reason for his benching was the fact that he wasn’t listening to the coaches during the draft phase on stage.

Players also weren’t the only source of concerns around the team. First, the issues with the former head coach Peter Zhang surfaced, and then Riot started an investigation into the CEO Andy ‘Reginald’ Dinh after some accusations from the ex-team member Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng. All these issues without proper communication with the fans put the players in a difficult position, and the biggest brunt of it was on the team's star jungler Mingyi ‘Spica’ Lu.

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But there are signs of going back to normal. Peter Zhang and Keaidou are no longer with the team. Shenyi seems to be more in sync with the rest of the team after a short Academy stint. And they also added Huang ‘Maple’ Yi-Tang to their roster. Maple is a player that proved himself time and time again with his performances with the PSG Talon and Flash Wolves before that. Although he had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at LPL, he is still a player whose caliber is at the top of LCS.

We have TSM seventh in our power rankings, but I also think it is possible they finish a lot higher than that. The biggest reason to think they will not be a top-tier team is the underperformance of Spica and the fact that Heo ‘Huni’ Seung-hoon and Edward ‘Tactical’ Ra weren’t playing well. But we know that all three of these players are potentially top tier in their roles and even if just two of them play to that potential once again, TSM can show great improvements compared to the Spring Split.