Everything you missed from Week 6 of the NA LCS Spring Split

If you hadn’t paid attention to the 2018 Spring Split before this week, it would seem pretty unassuming. After all, TSM won both games and otherwise the rosters that look strongest on paper pulled off victories. But in practice, this week’s results were a little more complicated than that.

For TSM, this marks only the second time all split that the team has managed a 2-0 week, a stark reminder of just how poorly things have gone so far this year. Almost as importantly, this week’s win against Echo Fox is also just the second time that TSM has defeated a team from the top half of the NA LCS standings.

Riot Games

But TSM weren’t the only team to rise above expectations. 100 Thieves, who have endured almost two full weeks of fans thinking they had peaked too early, took home a critical win against Cloud9 in impressive fashion to kick off their own 2-0 week. While the past couple of weeks may have looked a little like 100 Thieves were fading away, week six helped to firmly plant them among the best teams in the NA LCS.

As for the other top half teams, things were a little disappointing this week. As we’ve already mentioned both Echo Fox and Cloud9 fell this week to opponents lower in the standings than themselves, while Clutch Gaming and Team Liquid both went 1-1, a fair record considering they played Cloud9 and Echo Fox respectively on Sunday.

Riot Games

So, where do all these results leave the NA LCS standings? The line between playoff team and non-playoff team in North America is getting a little more defined every week, and now it seems like we might finally know where to draw it. While teams at the bottom of the standings aren’t too far behind some of those in the middle, the current gap between TSM in sixth place — with a record of 6-6 — and OpTic Gaming in seventh place — 4-8 — shows us that there is at least a slight different between the teams if playoffs were to start today.

Each of our top six teams here seem a cut above their lower table counterparts, and that makes it tempting to say that this is who we’ll have when the split comes to a close. But the split’s not over yet, there’s still four weeks to go, and if 2018 in League of Legends has taught us anything so far, it’s that what seemed certain one week, might not necessary still be true the next week.