Although the second North American El Clásico of the season wasn't as explosive as the first, the result remained the same. The reigning IEM world champions were able to thwart their arch nemesis, Counter Logic Gaming, in a competitive match that all but secured their spot into the playoff's semifinal round.

In the rest of today's action: Team Liquid's Piglet beat up what was left of the auto-relegated Team Coast, Team Impulse and Gravity continued their surge into the playoffs with respective wins, and Team 8 pulled off a comeback victory against the roller coaster ride that is Cloud9.

With only two games left for each team to play before the playoffs start, it's now or never for teams to make their final pushes and secure a Top 6 spot.

Dying for Victory

When the LCS season was about to kick off, Team 8 were usually predicted to be a bottom tier team by a majority of the League of Legends community. It wasn't that there was anything necessarily 'wrong' with Team 8, but there wasn't any fiery element or reason why many could see them being one of the league's Top 6 teams.

Dignitas brought in two new Koreans that were making noise in solo queue. Winterfox did the same, picking up two more Koreans to go alongside Altec and Pobelter who were expected to mature as the team's star players. Team Liquid picked up Piglet. Impulse picked up Impact. Gravity looked strong in the qualifiers. Even Team Coast, who were also considered one of the bottom teams, had the lasting impression of knocking out Maknoon's Team Fusion in the expansion tournament to make it into the NA LCS.

Team 8 were able to make it into the NA LCS by getting through the promotional tournament and knocking Complexity out, but that didn't look as impressive a few weeks later when both Complexity teams failed to make it to the latter rounds of the expansion tournament.

T8 were the kids in the back of the room that no one paid attention to. Yeah, you would play them once in awhile and CaliTrlolz might pull out something crazy, but there was no dangerous factor to them. Maplestreet still had the stigma from playing on one of the worst teams in LCS history in Velocity, and the rest of the team weren't flashy names that came from the Korean solo queue or had a strong history behind them.

On paper, their team doesn't look menacing. Maplestreet sits in ninth place of all starting AD's when it comes to kills (only trailing Coast's Mash). It's true that Slooshi and Cali rank near the top of the leader boards when it comes to kills at their position, 66 and 60 respectively, but they also die a ton — Cali only trails Coast's Cris in deaths with 57 to 65 and Slooshi leads all mid-laners in deaths with 52.

As a whole, Team 8 are one of the teams that die the most in the entire league, with only Porpoise not ranking in one of the Top 5 spots at his position in death totals.

But that's really what Team 8 boils down to. They do die a lot and can get blown out at times, but they aren't a one player team. Cali would be the closest thing the team has to an all-star, being one of the most dangerous carries at his positions, yet you'd be hard-pressed to single out one player from the bunch. Although Maplestreet can be lost at times when they push the gold and kills onto Slooshi and Cali, he, along with Porpoise, have proven to be the game breaker and No. 1 carry the team needed to win.

Case in point, today's game against Cloud 9.

C9 were leading Team 8 for most of the game, pushing the bottom lane to pick up an inhibitor and expand their lead. Cali was able to get an important teleport off into the middle of Cloud 9, Maplestreet and company were able to chunk them down and turn the tables by picking up a Baron that pushed them back into the game. Maplestreet was the main carry for the whole, Slooshi playing more utility on Lulu and Cali taking more of an engage role with Vlad.

Maplestreet responded by backing up his team's belief in him, ending with an 9/1/6 stat-line and helping move Team 8's record to an astonishing 9-7 with two games left in the season. A few games ago, it was Porpoise who had a big game on Rek'sai. Slooshi with his Orianna. Cali with his Gragas and a slew of other champions. It doesn't matter who they chose on the day; the other members of the team will take a supportive or utility role, die if need be, and do anything that needs to be done to come out with a win.

It would have been easy for Team 8 to flinch during the regular season during a bad week and look for a replacement, but they never did. The five guys that started the season have stayed on throughout, experiencing the highs and lows of being a team and coming out better for it.

Every great team needs an identity. Team Impulse are insane. Cloud 9 have their cohesion and teamwork. Team SoloMid have their play that revolves around an aggressive ace mid-laner with Bjergsen.

Team 8 works hard. They kinda die a lot. Their games aren't likely to win any awards or make it into the LCS' highlight videos, but, despite all of that, each player believes that the four guys beside him can take them to the playoffs. They've beaten Impulse, TSM and C9 this season, proving that they can beat anyone at anytime.

If T8 can survive through the final week and make the playoffs, whichever team they draw in the first round will be the favorite. Either Impulse will be too good mechanically, or there is no way Cloud 9 would lose their first non-finals playoff series to a team like Team 8.

That shouldn't bother Team 8. They've been underdogs the entire season, and what have they done?

Work hard. Believe in one another. Win.

Other teams can have their bigger named imports and roster transactions, but Team 8 will put their noses to the ground and continue winning the way they've done all season.

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for The Score eSports, and he recaps each week's EU LCS and NA LCS. He thinks Team 8 is a pretty rad team. You can follow him on Twitter.