NA CS in BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2022

As the 2020-2021 professional season has been a turbulent time for the North American scene, we have seen many changes on the region’s playing field. Losing multiple high-tier players to a competitor title, VALORANT. Teams failing to show up the way they used to. Rosters not quick enough to adjust to online meta to offline and back again.

With that in mind, 2022 has been a period of massive reformation of the region’s teams. The poster boys of North America, Team Liquid, are the most-talked case: as rumors about the roster’s upcoming changes appeared months in advance, some believers even predicted nitr0’s glorious return to the scene – and they were right.

Well, the teams

As the esports community approached the first big event of the year – the latest installment of the long-standing BLAST Premiere league – Spring Groups 2022, it seemed that North American teams were ready to hit their stride. Three teams represent the region: Complexity, Evil Geniuses, and Team Liquid.

Team Liquid

As they are the longest-standing team on the North American scene and the last bastion of NA’s S-tier competitive CS:GO, it’s only fair to start the list off with Team Liquid. For TL, the complete restructuring of the roster between the end of 2021 – the start of 2022 has been a logical conclusion to the squad’s performance in the 2021 professional season. The team’s mediocre performance and growing issues with the chemistry between players made sure of that.

Failing to achieve any kind of worthwhile results in the years’ offline S-tier events, the players’ frustration was made visible even in their interviews for HLTV. In an ironic twist of fate, Team Liquid drew the short straw in 2021, beginning and ending the year in the exact same manner: being knocked down to 4th place by Natus Vincere in BLAST Premiere: Global Final 2020 and BLAST Premiere: World Final 2021.

With that in mind, the news about Team Liquid parting ways with FalleN, Stewie2K, and Grim did not come as a surprise. In turn, Team Liquid would acquire a player from team Extra Salt with a lot of potential – oSee, as well as re-sign the original member of the team, the legendary in-game leader nitr0. And as a cherry on top, the final player to join the updated roster would be Shox, a legend of Counter-Strike – with a career spanning across three titles and two decades, the French player is one of the most well-known esports athletes in the world.

Evil Geniuses

For Evil Geniuses, the story is very much the same. A failed 2021 followed by a complete rebuild – and even a comeback from VALORANT retirement incident. It’s been four years since the team last won a notable S-tier international event – StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 8 – and the constant defeats may wear down even stone.

But CS:GO rosters are not set in stone, which is why Evil Geniuses opened up the year with a grand rebuild, as well. Parting ways with MICHU and stanislaw, releasing one of the icons of NA CS:GO – tarik. In return, EG acquired RUSH and Team Liquid’s roster shuffle allowed them to grab Stewie2K for their efforts. On top of it all, another North American CS:GO player realized he likes Counter-Strike more than VALORANT this year: autimatic came back to the scene after a year-long VALORANT vacation.

Complexity Gaming

Another North American team to set a lot of hype around its roster swaps. Opening up the shuffle season with es3tag shenanigans as the player was acquired by Ninjas in Pyjamas, the team didn’t stop there. The fallout from Team Liquid’s implosion – speaking figuratively, of course – left formerly TL’s Grim up for grabs. The rumors around Team Liquid acquiring Extra Salt’s roster were only half true – while TL did indeed get oSee, it was Complexity to grab the rest of the Salt, alongside Furia’s junior.

All three of the organizations are some of the oldest players on the esports field: operating for two – and even more, for some – decades, the organizations refuse to let the North American CS:GO scene go to waste.

Snap back to reality

And yet, as BLAST Premiere: Spring Groups 2022 is going at full steam even now, it seems that the game’s over for NA. As the last match of Evil Geniuses vs BIG comes to an end, it is a bad time to be a NA fan – all three teams leave the event from the very first play-in stage.

Complexity Gaming found their end in the match against MIBR. For this North American lineup, the event has been a disastrous tumbling down to Play-ins from Lower Bracket – and despite their best efforts to stay afloat, they leave the event without winning a single map. For the team dubbed “NA’s hope of this year”, I wouldn’t call this performance exactly fitting for this title.

Team Liquid once again finds themselves boxed in with the tiger named Natus Vincere. There seems to be some sort of a hex on this team – and even though the players are different, the curse remains, as once again Natus Vincere hunts Team Liquid by dropping down to the first stage of Play-in.

As for Evil Geniuses, the team’s loss against Team Vitality in the first round of Group Stage wasn’t pretty – 3:16. Tragically taken down by their compatriots, Team Liquid, in the Lower Bracket after a grueling overtime match brought them to face the German roster, BIG. Evil Geniuses took their opponents to map number three before ultimately falling in the elimination match.

The promises of North America’s resurgence might seem a tad farfetched given the region’s unfortunate record – 0:9 – in the year’s first event. Still, the very beginning of the season is a very turbulent time. As players struggle to find their chemistry, turn back online after a vacation, find their perfect practice regimen, etc. anything can happen. Hell, even Natus Vincere, the absolute champions of 2021, struggled at the beginning of BLAST Premiere: Spring Groups 2022, dropping down to the Lower Bracket immediately. It is too early to draw conclusions about North America’s firepower… but the 2022 debut could have been better.