Stockholm Major 2022 Day 1 Recap: Thunder Awaken Holds Strong While EG, Liquid Crumble

The ESL One Stockholm Major 2022 began on 12th May, with 14 teams battling it out in two groups of seven. There were close encounters, stomps, upsets, and more as the first day turned out to be an eventful start to this much-awaited tournament. Teams displayed a great deal of flexibility in their draft choices, as around 70 heroes were played on the first day. OG finds itself in first place in Group A, while Thunder Awaken leads Group B at the end of the first day. Here's a look at what happened on day one of the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022 group stages.

ESL One Stockholm Major 2022: Day 1 at a glance

Group A

OG is in fine form

On the first day of the Major, OG, despite playing with Sébastien "Ceb" Debs as the position five stand-in, carried over where it left off in the Western Europe (WEU) Tour 2 league where it finished as the top seed. 2-0 was a solid start to the day for the team against beastcoast, which must have instilled some confidence in Ceb and others. The second series was marked by BOOM's aggression with a high paced draft in the first game, which was enough to prevail over OG. But in the second game, OG made a strong comeback that featured a surprise Spectre pick in the safelane. The team's drafts and execution were both excellent.

Evil Geniuses crumbles

The new EG roster’s international debut was fairly underwhelming, to be fair. As the team has shown improvement over the past few months in the North American league, it was expected that it would capitalize on it and utilize its players’ collective LAN experience, but it ended day one with a 0-4 score. EG's first pick Storm Spirit was once again a highlight of the series as it was taken in each of the first three games before T1, after watching it lose three times in a row, surprisingly banned it in the fourth game. Funny enough, EG was playing really well in this fourth match, but T1, backed by three ranged cores, amazingly held its high ground, coming back to win impressively.

Additionally, the performance of BetBoom Team stood out in Group A. It displayed versatility and a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its drafts, drawing 1-1 against BOOM Esports and beastcoast on day one.

Here are the Group A standings at the end of the first day of the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022.

Group B

Gladiators shows off its skills at an international LAN

New era Western European rosters Gladiators and OG shone on day 1 of the Stockholm Major 2022 group stage. In contrast to OG, Gladiators had a rough start against TSM in the first game of the day but showed greater potential in the second game, dominating TSM and winning in less than 30 minutes. After drawing with TSM 1-1, Gladiators was not expected to do too well against Team Spirit, which had defeated Fnatic 2-0 in a comfortable fashion. It transpired, however, that Gladiators dominated Spirit in all facets of the Bo2 series and took what must be one of the most convincing wins against The International 10 (TI10) champions in recent memory.

Thunder Awaken pulls off spectacular Mega Creep comeback

Due to Mind Games' inability to arrive in Stockholm in time for its series against Thunder Awaken, the latter was given a technical win, putting it on top of the table even before the games for Group B for day one could start.

However, Thunder proved itself in front of the eyes of the Dota 2 fandom with a scintillating 2-0 victory against Team Liquid, securing itself a place atop the points table by the end of the day.

It was an absolute spectacle to watch the first game of this series, as it was back and forth series which even included a mega creep comeback, which Thunder eventually ended up winning in 50 minutes. Thunder showed great understanding about the timing of its draft in the second game and defeated Liquid in 39 minutes.

Here are the Group B standings at the end of the first day of the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022.

Based on how the first day went, the second day promises to be even more exciting, as teams like EG, Liquid, and Spirit will be hungry to rebound. It will also be interesting to see if teams like Gaimin Gladiators, T1, and Thunder Awaken can carry their momentum and continue to steal the show.