Astralis advance to ESL Pro League quarter-finals over Entropiq

The Danish team took a tightly-contested 2-1 in their first ESL Pro League playoff series.

Astralis continue their campaign at ESL Pro League with a solid win versus opponents Entropiq. Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander and his squad pulled off a hard-fought 2-1 victory taking their map pick of Nuke 16-14, dropping Vertigo 15-19, and finally securing Overpass 16-14. The win sends them to a quarter-finals matchup against FURIA, who topped Group B.

The Danes have had a rocky start to the year, finishing only 7th-9th at Blast Premier Spring Groups 2022 and 7th-8th at IEM Katowice. For Pro league, they brought on Asger "⁠Farlig⁠" Jensen, their newly-signed AWPer in hopes of changing their fortunes moving forward, and are now in position to achieve their highest Big Event finish of the year so far.

On the other side of the coin, Aleksei "⁠NickelBack⁠" Trofimov's squad end their EPL journey in the first round of the playoffs, having shown their worth in all three maps against Astralis and during their group stage matches by finishing second in Group A, clinching remarkable victories against Looking For Org, MOUZ, fnatic, and G2, with their only defeat coming at the hands of eventual group winners, Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Nuke was the map to kick off the series, and Entropiq secured the first pistol round as the defenders with the two teams keeping the score close early on at 3-3. NickelBack's crew were able to pull away from their Danish rivals by securing important kills and site retakes, finding themselves up by halftime, 9-6.

Entropiq began the second half strong, winning the first three out of four rounds played which increased their lead to 12-7. Astralis then began to assert their dominance and mounted a successful comeback, sealing the map 16-14 and taking a 1-0 series advantage despite Igor "⁠Forester⁠" Bezotecheskiy's 30-kill performance for Entropiq.

Vertigo kicked off in Astralis' favor after a quad-kill on the pistol from Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer and a successful second round gave them a 2-0 score. Although Entropiq established a lead early, Astralis rallied and secured the last five rounds in a row to enter the half with a narrow 8-7 advantage over their CIS-region rivals.

After swapping sides, both teams won three straight rounds each to bring the score dead even at 10-10. Fighting for their tournament lives, Entropiq attained a 15-11 lead, giving them four map points. Astralis then forced overtime, which lasted only four rounds as Forester helpd his side made quick work of the Danes to send the series to a third and final map.

Astralis opened Overpass in dominant fashion, winning five out of the first six rounds, only dropping the pistol. Entropiq at times were able to pull rounds together however the teamwork from their Danish opponents, especially from Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth and gla1ve, proved to be too overwhelming as they trailed 5-10 at halftime.

Overpass resumed and immediately saw a recovery from Entropiq, winning five consecutive rounds after losing the first two. Aleksei "⁠El1an⁠" Gusev's proficiency with the AWP enabled his team to chip away at Astralis' lead, eventually reaching a 13-13 score, both teams once again on level footing. But Astralis ultimately took the match 16-14 and the series 2-1 after resisting everything Entropiq threw at them in the final rounds.