ESL ESEA PL S1 Finals stats leaders

Fnatic secured their second $100,000 payday this year by defeating Cloud9 in the final 3-1 and it was once again in big part thanks to having multiple players step up.

Cloud9 put North America back on the map with their impressive runner-up result, although CLG also helped with the reputation restoration by causing an upset of their own.

Before we get into the specific players, here are the overall stats leaders of the event (only playoff participants included):

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Cloud9's star duo

The two players who find themselves among the best in most categories presented above are Cloud9's stars Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek (14 categories) and Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham (12). Although those two numbers don't mean much on their own, they do a solid job of representing the North American team's rise to relevance and those two players' impact on that run.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 Finals saw the big breakout performance for the 21 year old Canadian of Polish origin, who never had a better tournament in his career.

shroud was the best fragger of the tournament (on average), scoring 0.82 kills per round. He also had the most headshots (in total and on average), the most clutches and the second most opening kills.

And it was in the grand final that he excelled the most, firstly putting up a 32:17 performance on Cobblestone to give Cloud9 a 1-0 series lead and later adding another 32-kill effort on Dust2.

In the end he had 100 kills over the four maps - outscoring all other players in the match - and having at least one kill in 42 of the 51 rounds C9 won against fnatic (63:18 score in those rounds).

While Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares gathered plenty of the well-deserved praise for his calling throughout the event, it was shroud who made sure those calls translated into round wins by making the most direct impact for Cloud9 on the T-side.

His score in opening duels as a Terrorist was 27:12 - by far the most impressive of the event – and he scored at least one kill in 77% of the rounds C9 won on the T side (the rest of the team averaged 57%).

Unlike shroud, Skadoodle already had his share of time under the spotlight in the last two years, coming close to a place in our Top 20 ranking for both 2013 and 2014, largely thanks to his impressive play at ESEA Finals (especially Season 16), as well as FACEIT Season 2 Finals in Italy.

But still with $250,000 at stake, how he played at this event and against which opposition, surpasses all previous displays and justifies his expensive pick-up for Cloud9 a little over two months ago.

Skadoodle showed to be one of the world's best AWPers (although he only went head-to-head with JW out of the world's other best), not only passing the eye test but also putting up incredible numbers.

He led the tournament in every AWP category, and he did so in a dominant fashion – with 59 total kills more than the next best and 1.5 times more on average than the closest follower.

Overall, he had at least one AWP kill in 85 rounds, 60 of which Cloud9 won. That's 71% success rate for C9 when he had an AWP kill (80% when it was an opening kill), and out of all of their round wins 43% came in part thanks to his AWP.

Fnatic firing on all cylinders

A well-oiled machine that is fnatic was once again able to rely on production from all of its stars. Even though Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson was less impactful than in most of their events this year, that was made up for by Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist stepping up – especially in the playoffs. Coupled with another great event by Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer and Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell it was enough for fnatic to clinch another $100,000 prize.

Heading into the grand final, olofmeister was picking up more plaudits on top of his best in the world status, especially with the performance in the group stage elimination match against TSM (33:20, POV).

He also top fragged in the Keyd Stars and Virtus.pro series after that, as well as in fnatic's first map win in the grand final (24:10 on Cache) which in the end led to him having the most total kills at the event (238).

In other maps of the final he wasn't at his best, but flusha was. The #2 from our Top 20 players of 2014 list wound up with 93 kills in four maps (71:28 score in round wins) including some key rounds.

He also played great in the semi-final against Virtus.pro, and according to a new metric of ours, flusha was actually the biggest difference maker in fnatic's tournament with +11.2 round shares. Furthermore, he was involved with a kill, assist or surviving in most round wins for the team (87%).

Round shares at ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 Finals (representing a player's share in round wins and losses separately)

JW wasn't far behind him and olofmeister with +10.0 round shares, meaning the trio was responsible for +31.6 of fnatic's +42 round difference. And per usual JW was the most aggressive player and the one with the most opening kills (48 total, 0.16 on average).

NEO still has it

Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski was actually the most impressive player of the event if we'd look at statistics without context - he led the tournament in 5 categories and was one of the most consistent performers.

However, the context is that he only played 5 maps and that his best play came in the group stage (Day 1 stats). To be fair, he was also the team's best in the semi-final loss to fnatic, but it wasn't a memorable match for him or the Polish team.

This isn't the first time this year that NEO showed glimpses of his past brilliance, as he did the same at the first major, but he still hasn't made such a mark in some of the big matches, instead mostly excelling at the start of a tournament.

Tarik flashes potential again, hazed and reltuC push team to the semi

CLG's 19-year-old star Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik already showed his fragging potential earlier this year at CEVO S6 Finals and ESEA S18 Finals, as well as in Europe at the Katowice qualifier and the major itself.

This time he did it at a $250,000 tournament as once again one of the best fraggers overall (0.78 KPR), although he wasn't a sole star in the team.

In the group stage wins over fnatic and Keyd Stars, James "⁠hazed⁠" Cobb and Stephen "⁠reltuC⁠" Cutler put in Man of the Match performances, while tarik was the second best in both matches.

reltuC ended up as one of the most consistent contributors of the event, with a kill, assist or surviving 69.4% of rounds, but both him and hazed underperformed in the semi-final against Cloud9.

On the other hand, tarik stood out then too as the sole beacon on the first map, where he also had one of the highlights of the tournament:

Among the teams that failed to make it through the group stage, René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg turned the most heads thanks to his play in the elimination match against fnatic where he had a 35:23 score (POV).

Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey put up similar resistance for EnVyUs in their loss to Cloud9 (32:21 on map two), as did Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo for Keyd on the second map against fnatic (30:22).

That was our quick review of the ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 Finals from a player statistics angle, which while not showing the whole story can give us some insight with a big enough sample size.

We will now turn towards ESWC in Montreal, Canada set for the upcoming weekend so stay tuned for our pre-event coverage.