Well, that was a day of North American LCS.

TSM got comfortable power picks and won. Counter Logic Gaming got out to a fast start, roamed the map for more kills and won in a blowout. Cloud9 played well and Team Coast did not. Impulse played impulsively. Keith hugged some professional players.

Yep, the status quo.

Coast, We Have a Problem

Seeing as today was filled with one-sided stomps and little to talk about, let's talk about Team Coast. One of the newest changes to the LCS format is that with the expanding of the main league to ten teams, the team that finishes last is automatically relegated to the minor leagues. No second chance at getting in. No hope.

Just endless despair.

While traditional sport leagues such as the English Premiere League also go this route, you can't really compare the minor leagues of top flight English football to the budding infrastructure that League of Legends is trying to build. There is a hard drop off from being a pro LCS player and then falling straight into the amateur scene once agan.

With Team Coast, we now have a team that is 1-10 after their loss to Cloud 9 and are in a situation where auto relegation is staring them directly in the face. The idea of having the 10th spot being straight to Challenger in theory sounds extremely exciting — two or three teams that have no hope at the playoffs playing for their lives in the final three weeks, each not wanting to be the team that loses their dream in the final game of the season.

See, that would be really fun to watch, but then you have the times like we have with MeetYourMakers in the European LCS and now Coast in North America. You have nine teams that have passed them in the standings, leaving them with only a few games left to go with almost no chance of getting out of the automatic relegation spot.

This leads to what we saw yesterday when MYM upset the Unicorns of Love to push their record from one win to two. The players didn't look enthusiastic, looking more like a team that just won a normal solo queue game than a professional match, and walked off the stage with melancholy reactions. Even in the post-match winner interview, Jwaow noted that the players were looking out more for themselves and trying to grab the eye of a possible LCS team that would want to sign them before the Summer season begins.

That is the problem with the 10th spot being an auto relegation. Instead of having lower ranked teams coming together to fight for their jobs, you get teams becoming apathetic to their games and looking out more for themselves than the team itself.

You can't blame the players, seeing as going from a pro player back to the amateur scene is a huge drop off in pay and visibility. With your chances of staying in LCS with your current team all but dead, why wouldn't you go into business more for yourself and try to secure a spot on an LCS team that might want to upgrade the position you play in the off-season?

The biggest retort to this discussion would obviously be: Yeah, but if they are so bad, wouldn't they get destroyed by the top amateur team? Who cares if they get automatically relegated, the best Challenger team would crush them.

While on paper this is most likely true, you can't compare playing online to playing under the lights of the LCS stage and a live crowd watching you. The best online team could beat Team Coast or MYM nine out of ten times online, but the onstage experience MYM and Team Coast accumulated over their Spring season would make them more comfortable in the offline setting. Upsets happen constantly, so who knows what the result would be?

It's all about hope. A team can go 1-17, but if they at least have some hope that they can keep their jobs with their current team, then that team can still find a way to come together. Right now with how the league is set-up, MYM and Team Coast are looking down the barrel of despair and their hope for staying in the LCS is quickly dwindling away.

Classic North America

Team 8 and Team Impulse played in the most exciting game of the day, but both teams left the game with questions needing to be answered. Team 8 built a large lead into the late-game by picking on Impulse Rush's tendency to fight anything that moves but couldn't finish the game off. TiP started to make a comeback, catching T8 out of position and picking team fights that could lock down the opposing team with Impact's Maokai and Rush's Jarvan IV.

After reeling off a couple of won team fight fights and a Baron, Impulse were back in control and had taken care of a 7k gold deficit. Everything was going perfect until the next Baron came up, Porpoise came up big on his Rek'sai, and T8 closed the game in classic NA LCS fashion by winning a game off an ill-fated Baron attempt.

The win was gigantic for Team 8, getting their record to a respectable 5-6 and putting them four games above Coast in the standings. Impulse are now also at 5-6, but will be looking at some games they could have won if their cohesion was just a bit tighter.

Around the Horn

Team Liquid grabbed revenge against their former Academy team. Gravity took down TL two weeks ago, but Liquid played a much stronger game with Keith in the starting AD carry position. Per the new TeamLiquid setup, Keith played more of a background and utility-type role, letting Quas step up as the main carry of the team on his Kennen.

The decision paid off with Quas living up to his carrying potential and finishing 8/2/2 on the purple ninja, Hauntzer Quas' opponent in lane, didn't have an easy time on his first Hecarim game of the season, never finding the right footing and ending the game on a meager 0/3/0 stat line.

The two best teams in the NA LCS continued to prove why they're the best in the NA LCS. TSM had little trouble against the new look Dignitas lineup. Dig's new jungler, Azingy, had heaps of trouble in his first game, grabbing the wrong runes for his champion Vi and even having trouble clearing the neutral monster camps without recalling. Outside of that mishap, TSM were given some of their most comfortable champions, and took the game in a blowout.

CLG had the same level of success in their game against Winterfox, maintaining their early game success and grabbing a big lead in the first ten minutes. The first six kills went to their double AD's, Doubelift's Kalista and Link's Ezreal, giving them the perfect combo of power they needed to push through Winterfox's defenses. CLG didn't play around this time in the late-game, making sure to close out the game before the 30 minute mark and only giving up three deaths through the entirety of the game.

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for The Score eSports, and recaps each week's EU LCS and NA LCS. His favorite ice cream is free ice cream. You can follow him on Twitter.