During the first stage group matches of the LCK, the previous matchday featured a highly anticipated clash between the world champion team T1 and the Galaxy Battleship HLE. After roster changes, these two teams had met in the K Cup finals, which went the full five games before a winner was decided. It was expected that after the off-season’s rest and practice, both teams would show significant improvement, but unexpectedly, HLE got completely dominated.

In the first game, T1 started experimenting. Tom ignored strong laners like Renata and Nami, instead giving Keria a Dingzhen paired with Lucian. Although they gained a slight edge in lane, they were useless in team fights. Meanwhile, Doran was outmatched, and Faker couldn’t hold the battlefield alone. T1 lost the first game outright. In the second game, T1 finally got serious and picked more conventional compositions.

Early on, mid-jungle-support skirmishes favored T1 greatly. Lee Sin opened aggressively on both sides, the bot lane held steady, and the top lane successfully resisted pressure. During team fights, Lee Sin’s exceptional play led to continuous victories. By 25 minutes, T1 had a 10k gold lead, and before destroying the Nexus, they even prolonged the enemy fountain siege by over 30 seconds. After dominating the second game, T1’s morale soared in the third, with Doran even bringing out Akali top against Zeus Excavator.

Early on, Oner secured mid-lane advantages, and T1 kept winning team fights. By 15 minutes, they led by 4.4k gold. Doran’s Akali cleaned up in fights, and by 20 minutes, T1 began pushing high ground aggressively. The match ended at 28 minutes with a staggering kill score of 32:9. HLE never took down a single T1 tower, only managed one dragon, and were essentially steamrolled without any chance to fight back.

The biggest gap between the teams was undoubtedly in the jungle. Oner controlled the pace perfectly, while Kanavi repeatedly made costly mistakes. Even in the deciding game, you could see Prince using Q before E—clearly he wasn’t focused on winning. Kanavi is just not performing well. If I recall correctly, during the K Cup, HLE released a documentary where Hongmi said after watching footage: "Give me Zeus and Delight, and I can beat T1."

Now HLE has not only those two but also a big wildcard, yet they still can’t win. In the two losses, Kanavi’s stats were 0-6 on Wukong and 1-8 on Prince, showing a huge gap compared to Oner. And he still has the nerve to complain about his teammates at T1, which is quite unreasonable. Besides Kanavi, coach Hongmi, who joined HLE with him, was also partly to blame for this BO3, as his drafts in the last two games were simply awful.

Even in the final game, he let Keria pick Bard. Having coached JDG and HLE, Hongmi has allowed Keria to pick Bard three times and lost every match. No lessons learned at all. Letting Bard through is one thing, but allowing Lee Sin and Orianna for Oner is madness. These drafts are not from a competent coach. It’s clear Hongmi showed no respect for T1’s players.

In the post-match interview, Hongmi took responsibility, admitting that his drafts in the last two games were poor. Yet he also shifted blame, saying there’s no perfect draft formula currently, and that their Lulu-Aphelios combo wasn’t at a big disadvantage. He claimed the opponents just picked their favored champions and that some teamfight mistakes led to the losses. It’s surprising he even tried to blame the players.

Conclusion:

T1’s nightmare Orianna and Keria’s Bard are heroes even GEN respects. In his first match against T1 this new season, Hongmi let all these champions through. It’s unclear what he was thinking—did he not watch previous games or realize how strong these picks are in T1’s hands? With such a jungler and coach, one can only say HLE is lucky this year.

So, what do you think about Kanavi’s performance?

Feel free to leave your comments and discuss!