The NIP Swedish Swap: Pyth Out, Draken In

NIP at dreamhack back in 2015 with allu still on the squad, courtesy of wiki.teamliquid

Working towards a solution

Roster swaps can be sudden and out of nowhere, but after a long period of disappointing finishes, Ninjas in Pajamas (NIP) find themselves making a change of their own. NIP are one of (if not the) most historically significant teams in professional Counter-Strike. NIP created their first roster back in 2000. Since then they often been strong contenders for the top teams in CS:GO.

As of late, NIP have been struggling to find any success in pro play. They seem to display the qualities of professional players, but their team play is extremely lacking. The Organization has become understandably frustrated with the poor results, with their only noteworthy accomplishment being IEM Oakland in 2016.

The team found themselves ousting Jacob “Pyth” Mourujärvi as the weak link after a a lot of thought. In their defense, Pyth has been abysmal for NIP, having an average rating of 0.87 in his last 11 matches. Not an ideal performance from your team’s fifth. These poor performances include their inability to even qualify for the knockout stages of IEM Masters, not even two weeks ago.

Draken at a recent LAN event with Epsilon, courtesy of wiki.teamliquid

After deciding to bench Pyth, NIP hope to be moving towards greener pastures. They have recently picked up William “draken” Sundin from Epsilon’s squad. Draken may be untested, but the young Swede has plenty of time to perform on this new squad. His time at Epsilon was a little lackluster, due to the team’s overall performance. However, he has been praised by other pro’s as the up and coming Swedish star to watch.

Astralis’ Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz revealed that he thought draken would be the next up and coming player to break into 2017’s “top 20 CS:GO players” list. He goes on to elaborate that if roster swaps were to happen, that he could see the Swede playing on a top team.

Draken’s transition onto the squad will be very interesting to follow. NIP are hungry for success, yet seem to only out the players that aren’t apart of their core four. With the original four members of NIP having been on the squad for over five years together, their voices reign supreme when it comes to team decisions.

First rotating through Aleksi “allu” Jalli as their awper replacement, and then going through Pyth with their most recent move. It does not bode well for NIP going through another roster change, but hopefully with this time they can see themselves finally returning to the top.

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