Lee “Loki” Sang-min will make his debut in NA after making a move to Cloud9 from LCK Challengers ahead of the approaching 2025 season. Cloud9 will adopt Loki as their new mid-laner.
The two parties have made a verbal agreement as Loki will be Cloud9’s starting mid-laner in 2025. Cloud9 searched for a new player in the off-season to replace the departed Jojopyun. Jojopyun left C9 to join MDK in the LEC.
Cloud9 has continued its history of bringing in Korean players and Loki joins the likes of EMEN3s, Berserker, and Thanatos who have previously moved to C9. The NA team were previously thinking of picking up Dplus KIA Challengers mid lane Kang “Saint” Sung-in from the LCK Challengers League.
Cloud9 had a poor 2024 season as they failed to qualify for Worlds 2024 although the organization has one of the strongest and best roster on paper in the competition. C9’s season in the latter stages was full of struggles and eventually lost to 100Thieves in the LCS Championship.
Meanwhile, after three years with the squad, ADC Berserker was primed to leave, while Jojopyun joined MDK recently. These moves forced Zven to move back to the AD position as the replacement for Berserker. Loki will, therefore, be the last piece of the puzzle for C9’s 2025 squad. Loki will play with the likes of Zven, top laner Thanatos, and jungler Blaber and support Vulcan.
The Korean mid-lane started with HLE Academy in 2022 before being promoted to the HLE Challengers a year later in 2023 as a substitute before becoming a starter this season. He finished fourth and sixth in the Spring and Summer of 2024, respectively.
His new move to the top tier will give him the opportunity to showcase his best qualities beyond what he did with his best individual stats in LCK Challengers.
