LCS third seed Evil Geniuses have announced a substitute ahead of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship. Substitute bot laner Hasan “Kaori” Şentürk will be taking the place of Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki. The announcement was made on Twitter by Evil Geniuses’ CEO, Nicole LaPointe Jameson.
The substitution is being made because Danny, who played for the vast majority of the year as Evil Genius’ bot laner, is still taking a break to focus on his mental health. The young talent, who made a name for himself this year in the LCS by raking in multiple pentakills and helping the team lift the Spring Split trophy, broke down in tears after his team’s victory against Team Liquid in the Summer Split Playoffs. Subsequently, Evil Geniuses announced that he would be stepping down from the roster for an undetermined amount of time.
Chasing a Group Stage spot
Evil Geniuses will take to the Worlds 2022 stage in Mexico to compete in the Play-In Stage. They’ll have to get past teams like Fnatic and Beyond Gaming if they want to directly qualify for the Group Stage and join fellow LCS representatives 100 Thieves and Cloud9.
If Evil Geniuses ends the group in second place, they’ll have to play a best-of-five against a challenger from Group B to advance. Should EG find themselves in third or fourth place, they’ll first have to play a best-of-five against whichever team from Group A finished in fourth or third place respectively, after which they battle Group B’s second-placed team in another best-of-five for a Group Stage ticket.
The first scheduled match for Evil Geniuses is against Fnatic on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 11 PM CEST. You can find the full schedule for Worlds 2022 here.
