With their win over Aurora in the 2-2 bracket at ESL Pro League Season 22, FaZe Clan now has the opportunity to pull off one more miracle with Havard “rain” Nygaard.

The Norwegian, who signed for FaZe when they entered Counter-Strike in 2016, was recently benched as Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken re-joined the squad from Team Liquid.

One Last Run

rain wasn’t originally intended to play out ESL Pro League Season 22 with FaZe, however, issues surrounding the squad FaZe had when they received their invite meant that they were forced to recall him.

This was because both Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev were also registered to that team, meaning that FaZe would need rain to play alongside Finn “karrigan” Andersen and David “frozen” Cernansky to be eligible for the event.

The issue kicked off what could end up being one last miracle run for FaZe, with rain only arriving in time for FaZe’s second game — an 0-2 loss to 3DMAX — meaning that FaZe also had to forfeit their opener against G2.

With those two defeats leaving FaZe 0-2 down in the Swiss stage, they had to dig deep to even reach the 2-2 bracket, completing the comeback with consecutive 2-0 victories against Astralis and Inner Circle, who put in some great performances to get to that stage.

Those wins left FaZe with a game against Turkish squad Aurora for a chance at making the playoffs. FaZe kicked off that series with a 13-8 win on Mirage thanks to a rare karrigan top-frag, but were then heavily beaten on Train as Aurora bounced back with a dominant 13-2 showing. FaZe are known for their resilience, though, and they closed out the series 13-10 on Dust2.

In the opening round of playoffs, FaZe will take on Team Spirit, for whom Danil “donk” Kryshkovets and Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich have been performing incredibly.

NAVI Also Win Big

The final day of the group stage also saw NAVI impress, as they secured a big win over Esports World Cup champions The MongolZ, marking their biggest result since IEM Cologne in August, where they also defeated The MongolZ.

A 2-0 victory, NAVI first dominated Nuke and then managed to clinch Ancient in OT, suggesting that the form they showed on the road to winning StarLadder StarSeries Fall wasn’t just a flash in the pan.

In the third 2-2 game, BLAST Open London winners G2 suffered a big upset loss to exit the competition. French team 3DMAX were the victors, comfortably handling the European team in a 2-0 victory as they continue to grow from strength to strength with their new IGL, Filip “Graviti” Brankovic.