SK Gaming drops Pirean after disappointing LEC summer split

SK Gaming has decided to part ways with the League of Legends team’s mid laner, Choi “Pirean” Jun-sik, after struggling through the inaugural season of the newly franchised LEC.

In a tweet, the German organization thanked Pirean for his service to the team and for his positivity.

“Thank you for being part of our first year’s #LEC journey, being the leader of the boys and surrounding us with your positivity and Disney shirt magic every day. We wish you all the best for the future!” SK Gaming said.

SK Gaming has not announced a replacement at the time of this writing, but could use their academy team’s mid laner, Janik “Jenax” Bartels. This would give him valuable LEC experience at the very least, even if he is not given the starting position.  

The team started its summer split run with high hopes, having made it to the playoffs in the spring split. They struggled for consistency however and ended the summer regular season in seventh place with a record of 7 wins to 11 losses. This record included a six-game losing streak that plummeted them down the standings. 

Pirean’s personal form was not good either, with his posting the fewest kills of all LEC mid laners. The Korean player was also second-to-last in overall KDA. His early game placed him among mids with a negative gold differential at 10 minutes, rounding out an altogether disappointing campaign.

SK Gaming will hope that the team’s upcoming roster changes will return them to success, with SK having been an organization that has represented the European region in the 2014 World Championship which was highlighted by their securing a win over TSM in the group stage. That accomplishment now seems far in the past.

If Jenax steps up, and assuming there are no other roster changes to come, he would join Toni “Sacre” Sabalić, Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek, Juš “Crownshot” Marušič and Han “Dreams” Min-kook to complete the SK roster. The removal of Pirean does open the opportunity to recruit another foriegn player to the lineup, which SK may use to try and return to the top of the LEC next season.