Evaluating teams solely based on the names on their roster is difficult. Crazy sentiment? Maybe, but even the strongest of pre-conceived notions can be reversed when seeing a roster in action on the Rift.

With the offseason winding down, one region that has seen a lot of player movement is North America, and fortunately two NA teams have played professional matches with their new rosters: Immortals and Team Liquid. While nine and seven games respectively don’t seem like a large enough sample size in the grand scheme of a best-of-three league system, it’s almost half of the games of what was formerly the regular season slate.

These two NA teams made it through groups and into IEM Gyeonggi's bracket stage, looking surprisingly coordinated for their lack of practice going into the tournament. Some roster acquisitions, like Immortals' new support Kim "Olleh" Joo-sung, were announced mere days before the team's first professional match together. They each fell to a Korean team in the semifinals — Team Liquid to World Championship runner-up Samsung Galaxy, and Immortals to Kongdoo Monster. Yet, both Immortals' and Team Liquid's performances had hope of better things to come with more practice, and promise for the upcoming 2017 season.

Immortals

Immortals' biggest offseason acquisition comes by way of Korea, as the NA organization signed former CJ Entus Blaze and Longzhu Gaming top laner Lee “Flame” Ho-jong. In an effort to further bolster their roster, the team also signed former Team Liquid jungler Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett. These two players will replace Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon and Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin, who shaped the team dynamic of Immortals' 2016 team. All eyes will be on Flame and Dardoch going forward, as it remains to be seen whether or not the new duo can replicate and surpass the regular season success of their predecessors.

Both players’ reputations precede them — especially Flame whose legacy remains that of the carry top laner who can guide his team to victory yet is harsh when it comes to his team's play. CJ Entus Blaze became a mess of passive-aggression through the years, and while Flame isn’t entirely to blame, he’s certainly, and somewhat unfairly, credited for the majority of it in the court of public opinion. Similarly, Dardoch bore the brunt of the blame for disorder in Team Liquid’s ranks during the 2016 North American League Championship Series Summer Split.

There’s a running joke that Immortals will do well up to the point where Flame learns enough English to understand Dardoch, or Dardoch learns enough Korean to understand Flame. Yet these two players are more flexible than the majority of the community gives them credit for, and they their previous conflicts with former teammates share a commonality in a fierce desire to win. If they can each harness that desire while learning to communicate with each other and the rest of the team, then Immortals will find themselves near or at the top of NA once again.

Immortals Gold Distribution NA LCS Summer 2016 IEM Gyeonggi (new roster) Top 21.9% 22.0% Jungle 19.6% 19.4% Mid 22.8% 24% AD carry 23.9% 23.2% Support 11.9% 11.4%

A cursory glance at their IEM Gyeonggi matches shows Flame receiving a bit more gold than Huni did throughout the 2016 summer split, with returning mid laner Eugene "Pobelter" Park taking a bit more gold and rookie AD carry Cody "Cody Sun" Sun taking slightly less. Expect Cody Sun to take a bit less gold from the team than former AD carry Jason “WildTurtle” Tran did, and Dardoch to possibly take a bit more than he did at Gyeonggi.

While on Team Liquid, Dardoch made a name for himself as an aggressive jungler with the largest gold share (21.4 percent) along with the highest damage per minute (429) and team damage percentage (21.6 percent). This Immortals team shouldn’t have a problem giving him the resources he needs to attack his opponents from the jungle or execute proactive early ganks. Flame and Pobelter will be able to take care of themselves in lane, with only Cody Sun — who had an admittedly rough debut at Gyeonggi — potentially shaky in lane. In fact, Flame could end up taking away fewer resources than Huni when it comes to jungle attention and pathing.

Much of the Immortals’ success in 2016 relied on the one-two punch of Huni and Reignover. Dardoch and Flame are unlikely to have the same level of synergy, especially early on in the season, but both are more flexible than most people give them credit for. While on LGD, despite splitting time with fellow top laner Choi “Acorn” Cheon-ju, Flame learned to be less of a resource hog. His limited Teleport sample size with Immortals already look better than much of what he did with Longzhu — before he was permanently replaced with Koo “Expession” Bon-taek during the LCK Summer 2016 Split. The new Immortals don’t have the same one-two punch, but they could turn out to be surprisingly flexible, depending on how well Cody Sun’s rookie season progresses and if coaches Robert Yip and David "Hermes" Tu can reign in the players' large personalities.

Based on what we know of the players themselves, and what they showed at IEM, a perfect 2017 Immortals team can have Dardoch and Flame flexing from primary carries to more utility-oriented champion choices with Pobelter serving as their secondary and occasionally primary carry. Cody Sun had some monstrous performances in the NA Challenger Series, but will need time to adjust to the NA LCS and his new support, likely making him a secondary utility carry for the time being. Olleh will need to help guide Cody Sun while shoring up his communication with the rest of the team, not finding himself too far ahead or behind his teammates in skirmishes.

Team Liquid

One half of Immortals' 2016 dynamic duo is now on Team Liquid, as the the two teams essentially traded junglers ahead of the 2017 season (Dardoch moved to Immortals and Reignover signed with TL). Lauded as NA's best jungler in 2016, Reignover is a smart and instinctive pathing jungler who has the ability to dismantle his jungle opponents. The trick will be fitting him into a team without Huni, who has been his effervescent, carry-oriented other half.

Following Immortals’ third-place match in 2016 spring, Reignover admitted that he had a lot of trouble taking a harder carry style due to the difference in positioning both on the map itself during early jungle routes, and within teamfights as more of a DPS fighter than a crowd control facilitator. The former Fnatic player is far more comfortable with the latter, which should suit the rest of this new TL roster just fine; however, it also shifts the carry burden to other lanes.

Returning to TL after a spit of internal strife is AD carry Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin. In interviews with ESL prior to the team’s appearance at Gyeonggi, he vowed to once again become TL's carry. Piglet has suffered a somewhat similar reputation to that of his former teammate Dardoch and former OGN Champions opponent Flame — internally a poor teammate with a fierce desire to win and be the team’s carry. In the 2016 NA LCS Summer Split, TL shifted away from this mindset completely with Jovani “fabbbyyyy” Guillen as their AD carry alongside support Matthew “Matt” Elento.

Team Liquid Gold Distribution NA LCS Summer 2016 IEM Gyeonggi (new roster) Top 21.2% 20.6% Jungle 21.4% 20.7% Mid 24.5% 23.8% AD carry 21.2% 24% Support 11.1% 10.9%

Fabbbyyy received the least amount of gold of any AD carry in the 2016 NA LCS Summer Split at 21.2 percent. He also did the lowest percentage of his team's total damage at 18.8 percent (the next closest AD carry was Oh "Ohq" Gyu-min with a full 4.6 percent above him) and had the lowest damage per minute at a woeful 373. Gold shifted towards Dardoch — who by choice, necessity, or both was thrust into a carry position — and former mid laner Kim "FeniX" Jae-hoon.

After only seven games, this new Team Liquid squad is shaping up to have a far more standard gold distribution than their 2016 NA LCS Summer iteration. Piglet is already receiving nearly three percent more of TL's gold share than fabbbyyy and tied for the fourth highest amount of damage per minute of any AD carry at IEM Gyeonggi with 644 — respectable, but not the carry force that both Piglet and TL want for the upcoming 2017 season. Piglet and Matt had trouble against a few of their lane opponents early, and going forward TL will likely look to facilitate their bottom lane more. Additionally, there seemed to be a bit of miscommunication between Reignover and Matt regarding vision control in the mid game, which forced TL to play on the back foot more often than they had to. Promoting smoother communication regarding lane priority and when lanes are pushing should lead to a tighter mid game and better vision control.

Another player to watch on TL's new roster will be top laner Samson "Lourlo" Jackson. Although he's lacking on paper compared to Korean imports Flame, Dignitas' Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho and Echo Fox's Jang "Looper" Hyeong-seok, he's shown improvements in his teamfighting and tank play that shouldn't be ignored. If Lourlo is able to continue his improvement throughout the season, don't be surprised to see him step up as the team's secondary carry next to Piglet. For the time being, Piglet is the star of the show with Reignover facilitating lanes and out-farming his jungle adversaries.

Emily Rand is a staff writer for theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.