Living the Hai life

With a new season comes new stars and new stories. Here is one of the players you should look out for in 2015! Team: Cloud9 Region: North American LCS Position: Mid Perhaps more than any other player, Hai "Hai" Du Lam is responsible for his team's success. His shot-calling has been called among the best in the world, propelling Cloud9 over opposition time and time again. But can Hai's personal skill finally match his vision as a leader?

"Hai is a great player, but he has a lot of room to grow." - Bae "Dade" Eo-jin

2014 started out great for Hai. Cloud9 continued their domination of the NA scene, finishing the Spring Split with a 24-4 record. But shortly thereafter, Hai suffered a collapsed lung, sidelining him for All-Star Paris 2014. The setback especially hurt when it came to Hai's champion pool, which has been heavily criticized over the past several months as one reason for the team's struggles during the Summer Split and Worlds. Hai acknowledged that his shallow AD pool forced Cloud9 into certain sub-optimal picks during their Worlds run. "The team comps we ran involved having an AP top (Rumble or Maokai) / ADC (Corki), and when you have all that, you don’t want an AP mid too. Otherwise, they stack MR and you lose. With only three AD mids available -- Jayce, Zed, Talon -- normally one of those is gone or banned, and that pigeon holes you into your last pick (Talon)."

"Hai is unquestionably the best shot caller in North America." - Jack Etienne, Owner of Cloud9

During Worlds, Jayce wasn't part of Hai's champion pool, and the team's decision to play AP champions in the side lanes limited his ability to play some of his stronger AP champions. However at IEM San Jose, Cloud9 looked very strong; Hai in particular played well on several champions he didn't play at Worlds, including Fizz, Orianna, and the increasingly common mid lane Corki. Both for Hai personally, and for Cloud9, the team needs to grow together to continue their improvement. "Taking back first in NA LCS is my first goal," Hai said. "We’ve learned a lot from these past two years and I think we can take that information to further our success." After two consecutive Quarterfinal finishes at Worlds, Hai still thinks they have much to learn. "We have a long way to go. Our success in the beginning of the LCS was just more of the enemy teams being unable to capitalize on a lot of our weaknesses and mistakes," Hai explained. "The most recent LCS [split] has shown teams stepping up their game and being able to expose our mishaps. We need to be able to stop having mishaps and not allow teams to get any advantage off of us." With a dominating performance at IEM San Jose, it looks like Hai and Cloud9 are off to a good start. Check out the full list of players to watch in 2015 right here.