It Takes Time to Rebuild a Hive – Vitality in LEC Winter 2025

Vitality has been trying to rebuild from scratch for almost a year, after an inglorious history with disastrous super team attempts. In 2025, they put their trust in the hands of two of their academy players: Mateusz “Czajek” Czajka and Kaan “Naak Nako” Okan. This marks a complete contradiction with their former style, but none less risky in a bid to achieve good results.

Since last year, they’ve been able to count on Mac&Pad’s experience to lead the drive for success in the LEC.

I’ve always loved James “Mac” MacCormack & Patrick “Pad” Suckow-Breum’s approach to coaching, especially since they draw a lot of inspiration from traditional sports and tend to bring that same discipline and energy to their group of players. I usually find this interesting in the sense that it participates in trying to professionalize the game as much as possible. 

Can the best coach duo in the region do miracles?

Their flying start with MAD Lions in 2021, put everyone on high hopes of eternal success and glory. It did pay off when Pad rejoined Mac in 2023, with a convincing year overall and a Spring title. However, their first year with a new org in 2024 has been far from their standards.

Now, the success story from a duo of coaches that brought together a group of rookies and elevated them to the top of the league during a single year is put to the test again.

When released from their contracts with MAD Lions last year, they were the priority of many teams, including Karmine Corp and Vitality. They eventually chose to join the Hive, and despite some interesting debuts, the results were just not on point at the end of the season. 6th in Winter, 4th in Spring, and 9th in Summer to close their worst year of competition ever. For the first time in their career, they didn’t bring their team to a single international tournament.

The problem is that I feel like this year will be no exception. With the roster that they’ll align in LEC Winter, I don’t see them competing for anything more than making it out of the first three weeks. And even if they only achieve that with seven other teams out of the ten playing in the LEC, that would already feel like an upset to me.

Read also: LEC Winter Split Tierlist

Two rookies, for better or worse

Trust was put on the academy team bring in both solo laners from Vitality.Bee in 2024. Not only this is a risky bet, but I have the impression that they had no other choice. It doesn’t feel like Naak Nako and Czajek were that outstanding in the LFL to step up in a defective LEC team and have a huge impact straight up.

Actually, I have more expectations for the Turkish toplaner, which was for me one of the best mechanical players I saw in the ERL last year. Just a look at this Yone play he made during the Coupe de France will tell you a lot about his skills.

C'est possiblement LE MOVE de l'année en LFL ! pic.twitter.com/PLvvv7CDdM

— OTP LoL (@OTP_LoL) September 22, 2024

But again, another problem is that Naak Nako is a very carnivorous player. He loves to play his lane aggressively, but that means that either he or Matyáš “Carzzy” Orság will get less attention from Linas “Lyncas” Nauncikas.

Some will say that it’s a great thing to have both options when you’re a jungler. And that’s probably true when you’re talking about a well-rounded team with experienced players like G2 or Fnatic. But I really feel the opposite when it comes to a team that finished 9th in their last split and that is rebuilding around two rookies.

Naak Nako will need time to become a good weaksider, and Carzzy should naturally be the first option to carry a game in such a young team.

I don’t expect much from Czajek either. Even though he was always in the top-tier bracket of the LFL midlaners, and it’s a good thing that he finally got a chance in the big league. However, he has never proven that he could be one of the 3 best at his role in the French league in my opinion.

Statistics-wise, he was even among the worst four midlaners of LFL in Kill Participation (0.65%), Gold/Min (417.55), CS/Min (8.74), and Vision Score (1.02). I genuinely feel like Vincent “Vetheo” Berrier – relegated to the academic team – is a better player overall, even though I am aware he is a lot more demanding in terms of attention and resources. What’s more, his pairing with Lyncas was far from convincing last year, and despite that the Frenchman was clearly part of the problem, the jungler was not looking good individually either. 

Hylibaba holds on to inconsistency

There comes the last but not least problem of this team… Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov. I don’t know where to start with this player. For me, he is kind of the same profile as Vitality’s and KC’s former jungler Zhou “Bo” Yang-Bo. He might see opportunities, or windows – whatever you want to call it – that we, mortals, don’t tend to understand. I can see a world where that’s the case. But even if that world exists, this is usually not how the other players from his team will see the game.

Based on this premise those attempts will just look like complete inting from our mortal’s POV. Trying to make him align with other players will just be too hard or will take too much time of practice for it to be worth wasting time on.

I am afraid Hylissang’s prime is long gone now, and that he will just look like a burden for his team again. Last year, he was the player with the most average deaths in the LEC (4.98), blowing his record from 2023 where he also was first in this category (4.06).

My Final Thoughts

For me this roster is nothing but proving that Vitality has budget restrictions in the LEC department, maybe because of their former projects. It’s a good thing that the org is trying to promote some of the players from their academy, and stops trying to create a new superteam every split.

I don’t think it was a good moment nor the best vintage to implement this strategy, but here we are. Maybe Mac&Pad’s magic will do the trick during the course of the year… However, it’ll surely take more time than they had before the start of Winter.