SK Gaming will be entering the 2021 LEC Summer Split with a noticeably different roster than expected. Heck, we’re putting it mildly here. Erik “Treatz” Wessén, one of their most important players and undoubtedly one of the best supports in the LEC, will be role swapping to jungle, whereas Jesse “Jesiz” Le — SK’s head coach and former pro player — will be assuming the role of support. 

If you’re scratching your head right now, know that you’re not in the minority. As far as surprises go, this is a pretty darn bad one. So what gives? Why make such huge changes mere days before the second half of the season? 

As it turns out, they had no other option.

As explained by Joseph El Ouassi, SK’s general manager, no one on the team was satisfied with their placement last split and had voted to switch things up in an attempt to correct course and potentially leave a mark come Summer. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t what they had in mind. With Kristian “TynX” Østergaard Hansen out of the equation, SK Gaming was forced to find a suitable replacement post-haste — something they failed to do, albeit not for lack of trying. As a result, Treatz will fill in (and hope for the best). This change is far from ideal, but it’ll probably be sufficient for SK to weather the storm and find an actual jungler come off-season. 

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it is probably the fact that Treatz has been able to reach Challenger across a myriad of different positions. That doesn’t mean he’s ready to compete on even footing with the likes of Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski, Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek, Javier “Elyoya” Prades, and others. Still, he’ll surely be a lot better than most folks expect. Fortunately, the current jungle meta favors full clearing, so he should have it relatively easy — “should” being the operative word here. 

As for Tynx, his benching does come as somewhat of a surprise. Then again, he’s supposedly hard to work with (a euphemistic way of saying “toxic”), which seems to be at the heart of SK’s problems as well. Where he’ll go from here remains to be seen. In any case, we hope he’ll take this whole thing in stride, work on his issues and come back stronger in the future. He’s worthy of playing on the LEC stage, and it’d be a shame to see him fade into obscurity like so many of his predecessors. 

All in all, it’s hard not to feel for SK Gaming, given the way things unfolded. They had a very good showing back in Spring, and even though they’re still undeniably talented (not to mention surprisingly capable), it’s hard to get excited for what’s to come given such a gimped roster.