Entering the Summer Split, all eyes are on Cloud 9’s star mid laner Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen. After forcing a game 5 against TSM in the Spring finals, the elusive NA crown was within his reach. The story was set—Jensen would beat Bjergsen in final, finally claim an NA title, and perhaps cement himself as NA’s best mid laner.

But as we know, Jensen and his team fell just short of reaching their goal. The closeness of that final match has only intensified the hype around Jensen and increased the scrutiny on his play and ability to carry his team. Jensen’s consistently high level of play and ability to overmatch his lane opponent in order to ensure the win are the reasons why Jensen is C9’s Key to Victory.

So far, into this split, Jensen has been smashing his lane opponents with huge CS and experience differentials. His CS differential at 10 minutes is a whopping 12.5 and he carries an average of a 318 experience lead at the same elapsed time. Jensen also farms the most efficiently of all mid laners, averaging 9.5 CS per minute. While the individual stats are impressive, Jensen’s team contributions are just as, if not more impressive. Among the other LCS mid laners, Jensen holds both the highest kill participation percentage and the lowest team death percentage. This means that Jensen is involved in more solo kills, skirmishes and teamfights than other mid laners and actually manages to die less than they do relative to total team deaths. Jensen is fully capable of carrying his team in any given match, and Cloud 9 recognizes this and plays accordingly. Out of all LCS mid laners, Jensen also gets the highest percentage of his team’s earned gold at 26.1%. For comparison, the lowest mid lane share is 22.4%—that’s almost a 4% difference in gold. Getting the extra gold means nothing if it is not used properly, but so far, that hasn’t been a problem for Jensen.

Jensen typically wins lane early in the game and uses his priority over his opponent to make aggressive and influential plays across the map. This early game dominance tends to attract enemy jungler attention, sometimes drawing enemy laners to roam from the side lanes as well. When Jensen is able to escape these ganks without dying, it allows his teammates to get ahead simply due to the fact that their lane opponents are leaving lane because of the pressure Jensen applies. In the opposite scenario, where jungle and roaming focuses on other lanes, Jensen’s 1v1 proficiency makes for a relatively easy time in lane.

Jensen’s ability to be the reliable, main carry of the team has allowed the team the freedom to experiment with subbing top laners Impact and Ray situationally to create desired matchups. Without Jensen, subbing out a player the caliber of Impact would be much more risky and top lane's burden to carry would be much larger. Jensen’s stalwart ability to outperform opponents creates a stable foundation for the team to play around and also form team compositions around. Jensen has one of the largest effective champion pools among North American mid laners and this benefits his team twofold. What that does for Cloud 9 is it allows the team to draft high-priority champions in other roles sooner in the pick phase knowing that there are many options remaining available for Jensen to play. In addition to this it allows the team the opportunity to secure counter-pick options for Jensen without fearing the second ban phase will eliminate his champion pool. When players have deep champion pools, it usually proves to be ineffective when the enemy team attempts to ban out that player, and even in the current 10 ban system there are too many power picks in other roles to warrant using all 3 initial bans on one player. What this means is Jensen will always be able to be drafted a champion that he can be effective on and C9 can always be able to draft priority champions for other roles.

Jensen’s consistent carry performances, deep champion pool and snowball potential will be crucial for Cloud 9 getting another shot at claiming a North American championship.

After all—he is their Key to Victory.

Photo Credits: Riot Games

Statistical Credits: Oracle's Elixir

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