Despite NA’s struggles at Worlds, Evil Geniuses Vulcan embraces being the ‘underdog’

October 18, 2022

by Nick Geracie

NEW YORK -- Moments after Evil Geniuses finished their run at the 2022 League of Legends World Championship, support Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme sat down in an interview room backstage at the Hulu Theatre at Madison Square Garden with a mixture of exhaustion and disappointment on his face. EG had just finished Group B tied for last place with a 1-5 record, but Vulcan’s mind wasn’t on his team’s most recent loss, or the prior loss that mathematically eliminated them from quarterfinals contention.

“I was just thinking about how things would be if that JDG game had gone differently and if we had played a little better after how much they messed up, because they made a lot of mistakes and put us in a pretty solid position to win that game,” he said.

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Vulcan is, of course, referring to EG’s first match of Group B against League of Legends Pro League champion JD Gaming. As the first seed from China, JDG is a favorite to win Worlds 2022, but they stumbled mightily against EG and gave the NA side many opportunities to take a massive upset, but a few mistakes from the League Championship Series third seed cost them.

“I had a pretty big mistake that gave a double kill topside,” Vulcan recalled. “That made the game a bit harder, and I think if that doesn’t happen to me, we just snowball the game pretty easily.”

The game was a microcosm of nearly every EG performance on the main stage at Worlds 2022. EG showed flashes of brilliance and stuck to the style and fearless approach that got them through the play-ins, but against opponents of superior skill, the North Americans found themselves struggling to keep their heads above water.

After losing their first game of the play-in stage to Fnatic, EG went undefeated the rest of the stage, taking second in Group A and then sweeping MAD Lions to qualify for the main event of Worlds 2022. Although fellow LCS representatives Cloud9 and 100 Thieves stumbled out of the gate with misreads on certain picks in the meta, EG’s draft and preparation was not what held them back in Group B.

“I don’t think it was about the meta,” Vulcan said of EG’s group stage struggles. “I think it’s mostly just the level of teams. The level of competition is so much higher in the group stage.”

EG’s sole win of the group stage came against League of Legends European Championship representative G2 Esports. G2 came into Worlds 2022 with a 6-0 head-to-head record against Evil Geniuses from their matches at the Mid-Season Invitational earlier in the year, and after the European side smacked EG in their first Group B meeting, it looked like it would be more of the same. However, Evil Geniuses flipped the script in the rematch and defeated G2 convincingly by stymying their aggression with a pocket Shen for top laner Jeong “Impact” Eon-young while the rest of EG pounded on G2’s bot lane relentlessly.

“I thought we didn't even do that good of a job closing out that game, even with the lead we had,” Vulcan admitted before allowing a grin to play up one side of his mouth. “But it feels good to take that one, finally.”

Aside from finally beating G2 Esports, Vulcan also got to experience competing at Worlds on home soil for the first time, especially when he’s never competed this close to his hometown in previous LCS postseasons.

“The crowd was very nice. There was a lot of energy and we could feel it after our one win in the group stage. That was hype,” Vulcan said. “I had five of my friends drive down and visit … and my parents came last weekend. It was nice to have friends and family around and so much support from the crowd. People were screaming our names as we walked on; even though we were 0-3, they were still supporting us … It makes me feel a little bit better.”

Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games

Disappointing Worlds 2022 results aside, Vulcan has plenty to be proud of in his first season on Evil Geniuses. It was Vulcan who requested a trade from Cloud9 in the offseason -- a bold move given C9’s domestic title in spring 2021 and the best finish at Worlds 2021 of any LCS team. However, Vulcan told Cloud9 CEO Jack Etienne he wanted a change after he found out C9 was keeping Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen, Vulcan’s lane partner for 2021.

Vulcan’s belief in his own ability outside of the prestige of C9 paid off in spades. EG finished first in this year’s spring playoffs to win their first LCS title and attended MSI as the North American representative. Evil Geniuses finished first in the summer split with a 15-3 record and qualified for Worlds as the LCS’ third seed after finishing third in the 2022 LCS Championship.

“In that first year coming into a new org, I think there are always going to be things on a player’s mind,” Vulcan said in reference to his departure from Cloud9. “Things like, ‘If I’m not on this team anymore, what will happen? Am I successful because of this team? Can I go on to do the same thing somewhere else? Will I be successful after this?’ It’s nice to know that I wasn’t completely wrong to decide to go a different way.”

It’s undeniable that 2022 was a successful year for Evil Geniuses. They were the best LCS team throughout the season and had arguably the most impressive performance of any NA representative at Worlds this year considering AD carry Muhammed Hasan "Kaori" Şentürk has only been practicing with the team for about a month. Still, Vulcan is a true competitor, and it’s understandable for him to want more and wonder what could have been if just a few more things had gone in EG’s favor.

“I will never be able to say that we did everything we could because I don't know what the best -- I guess people call it ‘work-life balance’ -- I could be in the room and scrimming 16 hours a day if I wanted to,” Vulcan said. “I'm not going to do that, though. Maybe people will flame me for it, but I don't know what's the best way of doing it. I'm still trying to figure it out for myself.

“I think it was hard to integrate Kaori into the team. It was kind of a disadvantage, mostly because the Worlds meta is always going to be different [than what you played last] and some old duos from earlier in the year that I didn’t get to play on with Kaori before were played … I think in all, everyone should give a lot of credit to Kaori for the way he's performing; having to jump into a new environment with new everything.”

Photo credit: Lance Skundrich / Riot Games

Vulcan has many reasons to hold his head high after the 2022 season, but that doesn’t change the fact that North America suffered its worst group stage performance in Worlds history. A lot needs to change for NA to be considered as competitive as the other major regions, but the state of the LCS relative to its counterparts is something the Evil Geniuses support has come to accept, and in some ways, embrace.

“I think, maybe, we’ll always be the underdog, and personally, I’m fine with it,” Vulcan said. “I want to win, but … if I have the choice to be either the underdog or the favorite, I'd rather be the underdog every single time.”

Lead photo credit: Lance Skundrich / Riot Games