The Recall: What we learned from LCS Week 1

Undefeated teams, underperforming players and unexpected outcomes  — here's what happened in the first week of the LCS.

Cloud9 is still in championship form. C9 toplaner Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami earned the first Mastercard Player of the Week award of 2023 for two dominant K'Sante games against 100 Thieves and Golden Guardians, and support Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen tallied the most assists in Week 1 with 32. C9 leads the league in kills (49), kill/death ratio (3.77) and combined kills per minute (1.07). Their kills and KD are leaps and bounds ahead of second place team FlyQuest with 32 and 2.67 respectively. C9 also has the shortest average game time with 29.1 minutes.

Fellow 2-0 team FlyQuest led in share of jungle CS (5.73) and had the lowest deaths in Week 1 with just 12, one fewer than C9. The team's brightest star has been Korean import botlaner Lee "Prince" Chae-hwan, with a 19/1/4 score that ties him for the second best KDA in the league with Evil Geniuses botlaner Ian Victor "FBI" Huang; both players's 23 KDA is one fewer than TSM midlaner Huang "Maple" Yi-Tang's 24 KDA and 10/1/14 scoreline.

Prince leads all LCS players with 19 kills, is tied for the fewest deaths with one, leads in kill share with 59.4%, leads in damage per minute with 940, and leads in percentages of his team's gold (31%), damage (34.3%), and damage post-15 minutes (42.1%). His 10.5 CS per minute is also the second highest in the league after Counter Logic Gaming botlaner Fatih "Luger" Güven's 11.1.

Despite high expectations, EG find themselves at 1-1 after a narrow win over GG and a loss from ahead to CLG. One major reason why? EG midlaner Joseph Joon "jojopyun" Pyun's poor showings. His 1/7/6 and 4/5/4 KDAs on Azir and Ryze are undeniably worse than his 2022 play, especially considering Ryze's current strength. jojo accounts for 42.9% of his team's deaths, the most in the league, despite his average CS difference at 10 minutes being the second best with 14.5.

Other notable stats

• C9 and CLG are both 2-0 despite C9 having the highest combined kills per minute (1.07) and CLG having the lowest (0.52).
• Immortals found just six kills and a 0.22 KD ratio in Week 1, while GG logged 43 deaths; all three stats rank at the bottom of the league.
• The 1-1 100 and 0-2 Team Liquid are tied for the highest average share of lane CS with 51.2%.
• CLG jungler Juan Arturo "Contractz" Garcia ranks first with 90.5% kill participation.
• Dignitas botlaner Trevor "Spawn" Kerr-Taylor logged a 0.0 KDA (0/5/0), which ranks last along with his -1,064 gold difference, -462 experience difference, and -21 CS difference at 10.
• Ryze, Lucian, Sejuani and Kassadin have 100% pick/ban rates; Sejuani has been picked eight times, Ryze once, and Kassadin zero times.
• Wukong found 25 kills in four games, 11 of which were found by C9 jungler Robert "Blaber" Huang in the first game of the split.
• Jax has the most champion deaths with 29.

All stats from Leaguepedia and Oracle's Elixir. Featured photos courtesy of Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games.