SK Telecom: From Disappointing to Dominating

At this point, I've talked about SKT's roster so much that I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. Even so, it cannot be stressed enough just how high the concentration of skill is on the team, and how disappointing the team's Proleague performances have been in comparison. Looking at the roster alone, Zest should not have all-killed SKT in Round 1. Hell, SKT should have won Round 1 with complete ease. Instead they fell flat and proceeded to be Zest's personal punching bag for months. In Round 2, they missed the playoffs. Absolutely unacceptable.

SKT certainly has a disadvantage in the extreme visibility of their players. Not only do they field the same 5-6 players every round, just about every one of those players is in Code S. Rain, Parting, Classic, Soulkey and soO are all high-caliber individual league players, and they're always leaving behind plenty of VODs to study. That may have factored into their sub-par performances in Proleague so far.

That said, the SKT of Round 3 was vastly different from that of Round 1 (let alone the embarrassing SKT of Round 2). For all the let-downs the team endured in the two previous rounds, SKT finally did what they were supposed to do in Round 3. Consider this: SKT won as many matches 3-0 this round as Prime has won matches all season. Their win/loss differential was equal to that of the next five teams combined. This is in large part due to the Protoss line-up, led by Rain, stepping up and coming through for the team on repeated occasions. If there is anything at all we can say with absolute conviction about Proleague, it is that the team with the best Protosses tends to win, especially in the playoffs.

Jin Air Green Wings: More Than A Two Man Gang

In the Bo5 format, it turns out that having two world class players is enough to become a championship contender. sOs' round 1 slump is but a distant memory, and together with Maru and the Jin Air bench, he's helped carry the team from the bottom to the top.

Jin Air didn't look to be at their best this round, starting off slow after winning the R2 championship. This was in large part due to Maru's lackluster overall performance, finishing the regular round with a disappointing 3-4 record (as compared to 7-3 or 5-1 in previous rounds). However, sOs stepped up to fill the gap as the go-to player, leading Jin Air to a 4-3 finish.

Honestly, as good as Jin Air was throughout all of last round (culminating in Maru's destruction of the MVP line-up), I feel like the team's strengths have shifted in Round 3. If they were a two-man team in their Round 2 run, they've shown they're a solid all-around team in Round 3. Even with Rogue continuing to play below our expectations, it's not like Maru and sOs both have to win for Jin Air to have a chance. Cure has shown that he's capable of standing his own against top competition, and TRUE has started to heat up in both Proleague and GSL. Also, even if Rogue has not become Jin Air's third superstar, he is still a strong player that other teams must plan around.

Looking at Jin Air's performance this round, they may not strike you as much of a threat to the monstrous SKT line-up awaiting in the finals, or even to KT/CJ, both of whom they've lost to this round. Maru's semi-slump made the race for the round playoffs much closer than the Round 2 champions would have liked, but he seems to have rebounded by crushing DRG and Myungsik almost effortlessly in Code S. Much of Jin Air's troubles in the regular round were due to Maru's shaky performances, and if he has shaken off whatever it was that temporarily held him back, then I see no reason why Jin Air can't defend their title.

KT Rolster: The Flash Constant

Depth has not been KT Rolster's strength in the Starcraft 2 era. Last season of Proleague, the responsibility fell on Flash to put the team on his shoulders and drag them as far as he could take them. Based on his almost superhuman performance, KT Rolster went further than they had any right to, ending the season in third place.

The KT Rolster of 2014 is a different beast, and Flash is no longer their sole hope. In fact, he's struggled to keep the ace position he had on lockdown for so long, with TY nearly outperforming Flash in Round 1 while Zest has outperformed everyone in general.

With that said, it does feel somewhat comical that it once again fell on Flash to carry KT in Round 3, having the best record on his team by far. Flash went 5-1, while the Zest finished at a disappointed 3-4 and TY ended 2-2.

The Ultimate Weapon has received much ridicule these last few months, and some of it is deserved – a player who is so extraordinarily hyped up can't miss out on Code S over and over. But the criticisms you hear of Flash would have you think he has devolved into some mediocre Proleague Terran, which couldn't be further from the truth. Whether it's his experience in the format or simply because it's more suitable for his style, Flash always delivers in Proleague. He might not be "better" than Zest or even TY in a broad sense, but he will make your team succeed in Proleague. Zest and TY have not developed that power yet, which means we're going to have to delay that torch-passing ceremony.

When I look at KT, I have to ask myself whether or not they are truly top tier. Or in other words, "do they really have what it takes to win the grand finals?" Jin Air and SKT have an excellent mix of depth and star power, but CJ and KT feel like they are lacking something compared to those top two teams. As much as Flash has carried them in the round-robin phase, it will fall on the less consistent Stats, Zest and TY to show their multi-killing abilities for KT to succeed here.

CJ Entus: Looking for a herO

Can more than two CJ players play well at any given time? So far, it seems like the answer is no. When herO and Bbyong win, everyone else forgets how to play. On the flip side, when one of CJ's power duo fails to win, someone else finds a way to barely claw out a win as if his life depended on it. There-in lies CJ's consistency in inconsistency: You don't know how anyone will perform on a given day, but on the whole they're good enough to grind out enough wins to get a playoff spot.

In the playoffs' all-kill format, some unpredictability is not always a bad thing. One player getting hot can be all it takes to win a match, but it could also be that everyone lays an egg on the same day. They've administered some brutal 3-0 beatdowns this season, and they've also struggled beat the bottom dwellers of the league. Coach Park will be pulling out all the stops to make sure the best version of CJ shows up this weekend.

Though herO is still a potent weapon, his reliability has dropped considerably. Somehow, it's Bbyong (the hero of a quiet 10-win streak) who seems to be CJ's most reliable threat, and it seems like he'll be able to win at least a map or two. In all likelihood there is someone among Sora, Hydra, Hush, Bunny and Gumiho (Sorry Effort, your 1-8 record has you permanently benched) capable of raking in a win or two when it matters, perhaps achieving redemption for this season's mediocre performances in the process, but CJ has progressed beyond the stage where we can safely expect any of them to. At the end of the day, CJ will probably live or die by herO's performance. Even if Bbyong has been strong lately, herO has been their best player for the last eight months. He has defined CJ in the 2014 season, and it will be no different in the playoffs.