After a disappointing Pro League season by their own admission, G2 Esports has decided to drop long-time player Joonas "jNSzki" Savolainen and sign Aleksi "UUNO" Työppönen from LeStream Esport as their newest member. It is still unknown, however, who will be replacing UUNO at LeStream.
G2 Esports celebrating their second Six Invitational win with jNSkzi holding the caber
2019 has been great for G2 Esports overall -- the mixed-European squad won the Six Invitational for the second year running, but for serial winners like them definitely felt the hurt in the Pro League. The team missed out on their first-ever Pro League Finals after having come together as a team more than two years ago, finishing in third-place -- a fairly distant eight points from LeStream Esport in second.
While Niclas “Pengu” Mouritzen did reiterate that the team’s underperformance in the first half of the season was “due to saving strats for the Invitational”, he admitted that they have “no excuse” for their play in the second-half of the season.
PENTA Sports’ roster with KS in Season 5 (From L to R: Goga, jNSkzi, KS, Pengu, Fabian)
This G2 Esports team first came together in Season 4 of the Pro League in 2017, comprising Pengu, jNSkzi, Fabian “Fabian” Hallsten, Daniel "Goga" Mazorra Romero, and Niklas “KS” Massierer, with Vincent "Falko" Baucino as their sixth member. Soon after, Falko was dropped, and then KS was briefly replaced by Ville “Sha77e” Palola, before Juhani “Kantoraketti” Toivonen filled that then-transient fifth spot in May 2018.
Now, with the rest of the region catching up, and having missed out on the first Pro League Finals in Europe since Season 5, G2 Esports has made a change. While statistics don’t tell the full story, they are indicative enough to understand the reasoning behind G2 Esports’ change at a base level.
The full statistics from Season 9 of the Pro League in Europe
Overall in Season 9 of the Pro League, jNSkzi finished with a SiegeGG rating of 0.81 born from a -32 Kill-Death delta, a -7 Opening K-D delta, and a significantly disappointing KOST of 0.55 (indicating that he only had an impact on 55% of all the rounds played). These figures came after he largely played IQ on attack and Maestro on defence.
The statistics from the Six Invitational 2019 Playoffs
Looking at the Six Invitational, the picture is definitely prettier, but any issue is easier to overlook given G2 Esports’ success at the event. Across the two group stage matches against mantisFPS (now Cloud9) and Mock-it Esports (now Natus Vincere), jNSkzi was again bottom-ranked on his team with a 0.98 rating on predominantly Buck and Mute. In the playoffs, on the other hand, playing Jackal and Mute to finish with an overall rating of 0.92, a 0.63 KOST, and a -11 K-D delta.
His replacement, UUNO, on the other hand had an even worse rating at the Season 9 Finals, but it was only across a single game and with a team that has been consistently poor offline. Online, though, in the Pro League, he was given a 1.01 rating with a 0.63 KOST on mainly Ash and Pulse. At the Six Invitational too, his statistics were slightly worse than jNSkzi’s, but only marginally so and only across two games to G2 Esports’ five.
UUNO with ENCE eSports at DreamHack Valencia 2018
Casting the net back a year to UUNO’s debut season puts him in a better light, though. Then, he was the seventh-best player in all of Europe, although his team, ENCE eSports, was relegated despite his and Kantoraketti’s firepower. He stuck with the team in the Challenger League for Season 8, but eventually had enough and made the switch to LeStream Esport at the start of Season 9. Now, he joins the best team in the world, G2 Esports, and will be eager to slot right in and continue the team’s reign of terror across the world.
SiegeGG spoke to G2 Esports head coach Thomas "Shas[O]Udas" Lee (Shas for short) and UUNO about the move:
To Shas: The four-man core of G2 Esports stretches back to Season 4 -- what prompted the change now, and why Joonas?
To Shas: How did you settle on UUNO as the ideal replacement?
To UUNO: How do you feel about joining G2 Esports?
To UUNO: When G2 came knocking, did you have any hesitation? Why or why not?
To UUNO: Filling jNSkzi's shoes is no small task -- how do you plan to handle this challenge?
To Shas: Pengu mentioned some differences between online and offline play previously, do you think those were significant factors in not making it to Milan?
To Shas: While you are obviously reaping the rewards of your dominance on Rainbow Six, if you could put yourself in the shoes of a partial observer, would you say this sort of dominance is healthy for the esport?
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G2 Esports’ first game with this new roster will be in Season 10 of the Pro League, scheduled to start soon, as they seek to make amends for their sub-par Season 9.