When William "Leffen" Hjelte dropped out of Super Smash Bros. Melee singles at the Canada Cup this weekend in order to focus on Dragon Ball FighterZ, many viewers predicted that his absence would lead to another effortless win for Juan "Hungrybox" DeBiedma, the Melee tournament's top seed.

But that assumption proved only half correct thanks to second-place finisher James "Duck" Ma: Though Hungrybox did end the weekend with a Canada Cup title, his path to victory was far from easy.

After a 3-1 loss to Hungrybox in upper-bracket semifinals, Duck, the Samus main who has topped Michigan's power rankings since 2013, dispatched Theodore "Bladewise" Seybold and Kurtis "moky" Pratt to set up a lower-bracket finals showdown against the No. 1 Melee player in Canada, Edgard "n0ne" Sheleby.

Coming off of a high-profile tournament victory at mid-October's The Script -- and playing Captain Falcon, a character that Duck has struggled against for years -- n0ne seemed poised to make grand finals at the Toronto event. Nevertheless, Duck prevailed, defeating n0ne 3-2 to earn himself a grand finals berth.

Jigglypuff has long been considered a soft counter to Samus, but first-time Melee viewers tuning into Canada Cup's grand finals wouldn't have believed it. With a flurry of missiles, crisp platform wavelands and a few well-placed charge shots, Duck kept Hungrybox on his back foot from the moment grand finals began, winning three straight games to reset the bracket before Hungrybox had time to adapt.

Unfortunately for the Michigander, the break between the first and second sets of grand finals gave Hungrybox all the time he needed to regroup. As the Jigglypuff main adopted a more patient style, Duck seemed to lose some of the composure that earned him the bracket reset, throwing out multiple unsafe dash attacks that Hungrybox easily punished with out-of-shield rests. Three games later, the Floridian raised his fists to celebrate a hard-fought victory.

But Duck's stunning win over Hungrybox was a reminder that even the "gods" of Melee can bleed.

"Duck continues to advance the meta like crazy," tweeted Hungrybox after accepting his first-place trophy. It was his first set loss to a Samus main since 2011.

Duck's grand finals heroics were not the only highlight of Canada Cup; in the earlier stages of the tournament's top-eight, viewers were treated to displays of high-level Melee from talent new and old. The event's fourth-place finisher was up-and-coming Canadian Fox main Kurtis "moky" Pratt, who took Leffen's seed on his run to the upper-bracket semifinals before defeating Aziz "Hax$" Al-Yami in a five-game Fox mirror match.

Despite his loss to moky, Hax$ demonstrated his skill in the Fox matchup, and his ability to clutch out game-five situations, in a losers quarterfinals mirror match against Californian Fox Shephard "Fiction" Lima.

Marked by dramatic reversals, extended punishes, and a blisteringly fast neutral, Hax$'s victory over Fiction was a very different mirror match than the one played on the other side of losers quarterfinals: a Peach mirror between Bladewise and Ontario Peach main Timothy "Jamrun" Kocik. Though Jamrun lost to Bladewise to finish in seventh place, he qualified for top-eight with his own upset victory in a highly disadvantaged matchup: a 3-0 win against SSBMRank No. 38 Jigglypuff main Abhishek "Prince Abu" Prabhu.

Duck's run at Canada Cup 2018 is a reminder that in a metagame without Adam "Armada" Lindgren, nobody in Melee is truly safe, no matter how advantageous their seed or character matchup may seem.

And as the Melee scene looks forward to mid-November's Smash Summit 7, Leffen, Joseph "Mang0" Marquez and the rest of their peers in Melee's elite might just want to consider a Samus counterpick the next time they sit down next to Hungrybox.