Do you ever look at a roster announcement and think, “There’s more to that than they’re saying?” If so, then this decision from HEROIC to bench gr1ks is a prime candidate for some speculation.

Benching him after just over a month with the roster, the Belarussian departs HEROIC’s roster having played just two events, FISSURE Playground 1 and IEM Cologne.

Sure, he didn’t play fantastically during that time. An impressive showing in a 2-0 win over VP was the highlight, but a win over VP doesn’t really say much nowadays. And so whilst he may not have been the same kind of hit-the-ground-running kind of star molodoy has been for FURIA, he still showed promise.

The announcement itself is slightly weird as well. The only reason given for the benching is that gr1ks’ “playstyle didn’t fully align with how the team is shaping up”… Okay?

Given that gr1ks is just 19 and hasn’t had much chance to adapt to what they might want out of him, this feels like a strange cop out from them. We don’t like to speculate - we really do - but we think there just might be a little more to this one.

Whether there is or not, we just hope this doesn’t affect his career too much.

He turned down other teams to join his countrymen tN1R on HEROIC, it would be a shame for him to end up fading away as a result of that choice.

His replacement, in case you are wondering, is Alkaren, an AWPer from Spirit Academy that has signed on loan for the next year, with the option for HEROIC to make the signing permanent. Given that Alkaren hasn’t exactly been anything special for Spirit Academy, we think HEROIC’s luck as a team might be starting to run out.

Oh, and because we know you definitely are wondering, the answer is 0.71. gr1ks lasted 0.76 FNS’ on HEROIC.

To echo our sentiments on misutaaa replacing makazze on FUT: Eesh.