TSM is looking to shake up their roster amidst their second bottom-half split in a row.
TSM is one of the most storied and successful organizations in the North American League of Legends, with seven LCS titles and seven Worlds appearances. But the organization has been in a rebuilding process since the start of the 2022 Spring Split, a process started after they lost their franchise player Soren ‘Bjergsen’ Bjerg to Team Liquid.
Last Spring LCS started out with very promising news for TSM as they signed two exciting LDL prospects in Zhu ‘Keaidue’ Xiong and Wei ‘Shenyi’ Zi-Jie. However, that roster never showed the potential it could have to the audiences and after some shuffling around mid-split, TSM decided to start the Summer without Kaeudio and Shenyi.
For Summer, they brought in Huang ‘Maple’ Yi-Tang who is a veteran international player, who previously played on Flash Wolves and PSG Talon, and they promoted Choi ‘Mia’ Sang-in from their academy team. This new roster also did not have a good record, but they looked much better on the Rift, especially Mingyi ‘Spica’ Lu who played more like his MVP-self playing with Maple.
Still, as we are about to go into the fourth week of the Split, TSM is ninth with a record of 2-5 and their play doesn’t have an upwards trajectory. Their fans, who are accustomed to success, started to wonder if this team will ever reach high enough peaks to go far into the playoffs.
Enter the latest roster speculations. In one of his recent streams, former TSM ADC Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng talked about some upcoming changes for the organization. According to Peng, three of the four players won’t be on the roster in the near future. Their bot lane duo of Edward ‘Tactical’ Ra/Mia and the top laner Heo ‘Huni’ Seung-hoon are the players that are rumored to be replaced. Their replacements will be Tony ‘Instinct’ Ng (ADC) and Alex ‘Soul’ Luo (Top) from TSM Academy and former GG support Johnathan ‘Chime’ Pomponio. In an announcement today, TSM confirmed the roster swaps will be happening for the LCS Summer Week 4.
LCS and LCS Academy Roster Updates
Read the full list of changes as well as insight behind our decisions in our GM @glenyanglol post: https://t.co/aSRmze3sSd pic.twitter.com/P6tywyu8ms
— TSM FTX (@TSM) July 12, 2022
With Instinct promoted, Tactical will spend some time in the TSM Academy and we will see if he can go back to playing for another LCS team. Mia will also go back to Academy, replacing Shenyi which means TSM is one step closer to leaving behind their LDL adventure. To round out their Academy team, they also announced the signings of veteran top laner Colin ‘Solo’ Earnest and Andy ‘AnDa’ Hoang, who will be replacing Young ‘Hyper’ Seo. Hyper was a good jungle prospect who never played to his promised potential.
The biggest piece of news to come out of this, however, is the possible retirement of the veteran top laner Huni. Unlike TSM’s bot duo, Huni was moved to the bench due to wrist issues, not his performance. TSM said he will stay with the team until he decides his future, but wrist problems are infamously hard to come back from in the League, as we know from LPL star Jian ‘Uzi’ Zi-Hao. If he decides to leave pro-play behind, Huni will retire as a Worlds finalist and an MSI champion with SKT1, as well as an established career in Europe with Fnatic.
