’s LCS 2026 Summer Playoffs run came to an end
with a 1-3 defeat against in the lower bracket finals. The team has already qualified for
Worlds, but this loss means that they will
start in the Play-in stage, where they will have to compete against
,
, and the 2nd seed from the CBLOL.
Cloud9 had a strong start to the series but lost the other three games due to unforced errors and bad decision-making in critical moments. After the match,
Sheep Esports had the opportunity to talk to the King of Spring, C9’s support,
.
Commiserations on the loss, Vulcan. It was a pretty close series that could have gone Cloud9’s way. What are your initial thoughts?
Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme: “Uh, I don’t know. It’s two series in a row now that we’ve lost games like this, so I’m pretty tilted. I feel like we should be a much harder team to play against, but we are giving the enemy team so many angles, so many kills, getting picked off, and inting in some moments. I’m pretty tilted right now.
The Elder Dragon fight in Game 4 felt very disjointed from the team, as Edward “Tactical” Ra and you were completely isolated from the rest of the team. Could you talk me through that entire sequence of events?
Vulcan: I feel like we focused on the wrong things inside the game. We were trying to focus Garen in the late game when I’m pretty sure he is useless at that point in the game. For some reason, we felt like we should hit him because he is there and ragebaiting us. I think we should have played slower and thought about the other angles. They can win the fight, but it should have been hard for them.
I also think our idea was wrong initially. We said something about Vi soloing the Elder Dragon and the rest of us playing on our own, but it was pretty useless and I feel like we should have just hit the Elder everytime, and fight when they came into the banana brush. It’s kind of hard for Trundle to just raw steal it through Taliyah and Thresh. I think the first go should have always been to hit it, and then decide if we want to fight or finish it if Blaber (Robert Huang) thinks he can. We just did the wrong things in the fight.
There were snippets of the voice comms in Game 1 where you told the team to calm it down and play slow when things got too excited. The awareness is there but it just seems to be lost in tense moments. Now, with a bit of a break before Worlds 2026, will it be a priority to shore up this weakness?
Vulcan: We’ll see, because in a way, it’s hard to fix and not hard to fix. It’s like if someone in the game sees an angle that they believe is good, then they should take it. However, we are just calling stuff that’s wrong so we need to try and think about the bigger picture. There are some cases in the game where you are forced to do those plays. I hate when we do them when it’s not needed.
We are trying as much as possible to shore up this weakness, like you said. We’ll see for Worlds, because it’s not as complicated as when we have a winning position, we don’t need to do too much. However, it does feel like it keeps happening, so we definitely need to be on top of that.
Regardless of today’s outcome, Cloud9’s performance in the playoffs has been way better than anything shown in the regular season. What was the turning point for this roster?
Vulcan: I would probably say the week of scrims after our first playoff series against Shopify Rebellion, which was the week before we played LYON. Our focus in these scrims was what we needed to do to improve in order to compete in playoffs, and I think we did a good job at identifying our weaknesses.
The coaching staff did a good job at talking to the key people to either do something different better or communicate differently. We started playing the side lanes and mid game a lot better, so it didn’t feel like we would be desperate in the games because a lot of the times, we would play side lanes wrong, and feel forced to engage, and make bad decisions. It kind of hurt our mentality inside the game. With the improvements, we didn’t bleed a lot of gold in the mid game, and it made it a lot more comfortable for everyone. We kind of just trusted in ourselves to play teamfights. I think that was the moment where we improved a big amount.
The drafts for Cloud9 have been really simple and effective, with a high priority on cohesive front-to-back and ball-style comps. Would you consider this as Cloud9’s bread and butter or does the team have more spicy comps to pull out deep into a Fearless draft?
Vulcan: I mean, we have a lot of options. Loki (Lee Sang-min) is really flexible, and if it comes to assassins, he can play them. It didn’t happen today but that’s something that we can always do. We are able to play different styles, but we just talk a lot about team comps, how they interact, and what we need against the enemy champions, and stuff like this.
I think we are kind of on top of like “Okay, we pick this champ and now we want this champ.” We don’t know exactly what we are going to pick all the time, but we think about that a lot and have a, like you said, cohesive team comp. However, I would definitely say that we have a lot more styles other than ball comps. We can play a lot more stuff.
Despite qualifying for Worlds, it sucks to be in the Play-in stage as you need to play extra games and only one team can qualify. How confident are you heading into Worlds, and how confident are you about the LCS as a whole at the event?
Vulcan: I am optimistic about our chances in Worlds Play-in. I think Karmine Corp haven’t been good recently, but they have had quite a bit of time to adjust things that they have been doing wrong. I think they definitely have a good chance to bounce back, and are a solid team. I also think that all the other teams in the Play-in are also good, and quite dangerous.
Back in the day, the wildcard teams were very bad compared to the four main regions. It’s not so much the case anymore, as Brazil is quite a strong region, which we’ve kind of shown in the few times we played against them. We can’t go into any match lightly, and we’ll prepare in the short amount of time that we have to be at our best. I think NA is pretty strong. I feel like any of the three teams can win, depending on the performance on the day, which is very nice. I think we have three strong teams, and hopefully we can show it at Worlds.“
