My prediction: C9 will beat TL

Overall this is an exciting match up that I look forward to watching. For what it's worth, here is my prediction for the upcoming best of 5 between TL and C9.

BOTLANE (TL WIN, Sneaky falls BEHIND IN CS and LOOSES PLATES):

Team Liquids's main strength in this match up will be their slightly stronger bot-lane. Doublelift should outperform Sneaky and CoreJJ is doing less "what?!?/why?/oh that was bad" than Zeyzal. Zeyzal's mechanics needs massive work as can be seen by his actions in teamfights, also positioning tend to be suboptimal, and he does random stuff like burn his green support item charges on melee minions when a cannon is up or coming, making u question if he play on autopilot.

Overall Sneaky will probably be slightly behind in CS "most games" due to having a worst support and slightly worse mechanics, sneaky will probably give away plates as well. But sneaky can position and he will be good enough to "not feed", Sneaky's semi-safe playstyle will be hard to punish. While Doublelift is better in lane, Sneaky is roughly the same skill in team fights (where it matters the most), so I would not worry super much about botlane.

MIDLANE (C9 WIN, Jensen OUT ROAMED and SOLO DIES):

In mid C9 Nisqy is a beast while TL Jensen is a puppy.

You will see Nisqy roam better and out trade Jensen most of the games. Overall Jensen will be forced to pick "safe champs" that can clear and then go back to hug tower, clear and hug tower - this will be jensens playstyle every game. Expect picks like Corki/Azir/Karma/Syndra/Anivia/Ziliean/Zoe and possible Akali/Orianna from Jensen, safe/farm picks. Jensen will probably keep up in cs but he risk getting soloed a few times if he tries to leave that tower and he will probably get out roamed, this is why C9 has an edge mid. Having a winning mid means, more pressure on the map.

TOPLANE (C9 WINS, Impact slightly behind in most games):

Without going into depth: in toplane Impact will not have an impact. He will fall behind or go even against either of C9's toplaners. C9's mid and jungler will do a better job at playing around toplane also so C9 will have small advantage top overall most likely.

I say Impact can win lane one game if he get's a favorable match-up but I just think overall he will loose lane slightly most games. So when mid/lategame comes C9's top-laner will be slightly more fed.

JUNGLE (C9 WINS, no skill difference but Svenskerens BETTER PREPARED):

I think C9 Svenskeren and TL Xmithie are about the same skill in the jungle. But Svenskeren will come in better prepared and this is what will decide the jungle. TL recently lost an analyst called Kayys, the person helping TL prepare for and beat teams like IG. We can't know ho much this person mattered but we could recently see TL struggle hard against CG, a team that they probably are a lot better than, this is probably all due to a lack of preparation.

DRAFTING AND EVERYTHING ELSE:

Other than this, drafting will matter a lot these games. Either team can win/loose games if they draft really good/bad, we probably see at least one game just being over in draft phase.

Both C9 and TL tend to "play to scale" (sort of like FNATIC) and they should draft to scale well as they tend to do this better than they do snowballing, only Doublelift and Nisqy can possible do something with a snow bally early game champ. I think that in this instance C9 will just be better prepared and have a slight edge in jungle + top + mid (while being at a dissadvantage botlane).

I think the match will be fairly even but C9 should win 3 games while TL win 2.

What do you expect to happen?