Cover-Credits:
Is North American Dota back? TSM has secured a place in the Grand Finals by taking down yet another European team in its epic playoffs run at the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022. Tundra Esports will now have to continue its run in the Stockholm Major 2022 through the lower brackets after it suffered a 1-2 loss against the NA powerhouse.
Jonáš "SabeRLight-" Volek in particular had a stand out performance in the winner bracket finals. After the player got crushed in Game 1, he dominated Tundra Esports with his signature Nightstalker, going 18/5/23 and was a menace on the European teams’ backline. However, his best performance came in Game 3, where he made a huge comeback. He started off the game with 6 back-to-back deaths on his Enigma after being forced to lane into a Monkey King and Viper, all by himself; but ended the game without a single death after the laning phase.
He even landed multiple game-winning Black Holes despite the net worth deficit and secured the win for his team. “In Game 3, I already knew we won when we clicked the Enigma,” said SabeRLight- just oozing confidence on the big stage.
With this win, TSM has secured 1280 Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) points and has qualified for The International 11, according to the tournament broadcast. They are currently the second-place in the DPC points tally with PSG.LGD leading the charts with 1400 points.
Europe cannot handle TSM at the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022
Game 1 started with Tundra Esports pulling out the first mid-lane Rubick of the tournament for Leon "Nine" Kirilin, which proved to be instrumental in shutting down SabeRLight-’s Underlord. Nine essentially made sure that Underlord didn’t have a game by stealing Firestorm and using it on him, just bursting through the tanky Strength hero. Without a frontliner, TSM simply couldn’t fight on its terms and conceded the first game to Tundra.
TSM struck back in the second game with stronger laning setups and a dedicated initater in SabeRLight-’s Nightstalker which absolutely proved to be vital in ruining Tundra Esports’ gank and teamfight setups. He made sure that neither of Tundra’s supports could cast their spells in an optimal manner and picked them off every single time his ultimate was off cooldown. His other two cores Jonathan Bryle "Bryle" Santos De Guia and Enzo "Timado" Gianoli O'Connor were allowed to free farm and secure Game 2.
Game 3 was just the SabeRLight- redemption story which saw him put on a clinical display of turning a horrible laning phase into a game-winning mid-game performance.
TSM will move on to the Grand Finals which is scheduled to take place tomorrow, and will have a rematch against one amongst the three European teams that it had defeated, during its run at the ESL One Stockholm Major 2022.
