Golden Guardians Sign River

League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) team Golden Guardians announced a new mid-season signing on Tuesday, July 26. As revealed by the North American team, Golden Guardians have acquired jungler Kim “River” Dong-woo from rival team Dignitas.

On Tuesday, Golden Guardians unveiled the latest addition to its LoL roster in star Korean jungler River, who joined the team from Golden Guardians’ rival LCS team Dignitas.

The deal comes as a shock to many, mainly because such mid-season player transfers are fairly rare, especially considering the LCS is nearing the end of the Summer Split.

Regardless, the deal makes a lot of sense for both sides relative to their chances of winning the league and competing for a League of Legends World Championship ticket. Although both teams can technically still compete for a spot in the playoffs and compete for the LCS crown, Golden Guardians are in a much better spot.

Five weeks into the LCS 2022 Summer, Dignitas have managed just two wins (2-9), which sits them in the last spot in the standings, one win behind TSM in ninth.

With an 18% win rate and only three more weeks to go before the LCS 2022 Summer Playoffs, Dingnitas’ chances to make it to the postseason and compete for the title are slimmer with each passing week, and with the departure of River, those have now reached a new all-time low.

On the other side, Golden Guardians are 4-7, which is good for seventh place in the LCS 2022 Summer standings. Granted, even Golden Guardians’ position is far from optimal.

Since the top eight teams advance into the playoffs, Golden Guardians are still in the safe zone and will remain there if they keep the gap ahead of TSM (3-8) and Dignitas (2-9). At the same time, Golden Guardians are in a solid spot to compete for a top-five finish, which would secure them upper bracket seeding for the playoffs.

With a 4-7 record, Golden Guardians might be just two wins clear of Dignitas in last place, but they’re also two wins short of catching up to Cloud9 and Counter Logic Gaming, who are tied for fifth, behind Team Liquid and FlyQUest who share the third spot with 7-4 records.

With how close the LCS has been this split, anything can happen, but Golden Guardians seemingly didn’t want to leave it up to fate and instead opted to bolster its lineup with River. The 23-year-old jungler joins Golden Guardians as one of the best players in his role, and arguably the best signing GG could have made from the available players.

As revealed, River will immediately step into LCS main lineup for Golden Guardians, where he’ll replace Milo “Pridestalker” Wehnes. The latter is likely going to drop to Golden Guardians Academy.

River joined Dignitas ahead of the 2022 LCS season as a star player of PSG Talon, with who he achieved immense success in 2021. At Dignitas River has played 36 matches and helped the team place third in the LCS 2022 Lock In and seventh in the LCS 2022 Spring, one win short of reaching the playoffs.

Despite failing to achieve anything noteworthy with Dignitas last split, River stood out as the top performing player on the North American roster. Unfortunately, due to his team’s shaky showings, River’s individual performance figures aren’t that great.

He joins Golden Guardians with the second-lowest KDA (1.94) out of all junglers in LCS 2022 Summer, albeit he boasts impressive figures elsewhere. River has the second-highest KPAR% (73.6%) and fourth highest Kill share (24.1%) despite his 18.1% gold share.

River will debut for Golden Guardians on Saturday, July 30, when Golden Guardians face off against 100 Thieves in the sixth week of the split.