by FaZe Clan have announced that Havard “rain” Nygaard will miss the upcoming BLAST Premier Spring Groups as he and his partner await the birth of their first child.
It is the first time the veteran rifler has skipped an S-Tier CS:GO tournament since IEM Katowice 2022 in February of last year.
FAZE CLAN CS:GO UPDATE@FaZe_rainCS is expecting the birth of his child and will not be participating in BLAST Premier Spring Groups. We look forward to him returning to the team as soon as possible!
We will provide further roster news ahead of our opening match on Friday. pic.twitter.com/wLPenkj9B7
— FaZe Clan (@FaZeClan) January 18, 2023
On that occasion, the team won the $500,000 event with the help of stand-in Justin “jks” Savage.
After a strong 2022 season, the Norwegian was named the 13th-best player of 2022 at the HLTV awards last weekend, so his absence leaves a massive hole in the line-up.
To further compound their roster issues, FaZe will also be without their coach, Robert “RobbaN” Dahlstrom, with his return expected to be the next couple of weeks ahead of IEM Katowice in late January.
FaZe have not announced who will replace rain for the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, but there are reports that Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke or Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer could be added to the roster.
However, with k0nfig still being apart of the active roster for Heroic as a stand-in, the move to make him a stand-in for rain has been met with some resistance from other teams involved in the tournament.
At the moment it is unknown whether BLAST will allow k0nfig to play with FaZe, with the rulebook saying that an emergency replacement cannot be “a participant who is active on another roster participating in the tournament”.
It is unclear if k0nfig would be considered “active” as a substitute for Heroic, making this an interesting situation for the events organisers.
BLAST decides whether to allow or deny such a move on a case-by-case basis, and with under 48 hours before FaZe Clan’s first series against Complexity, we expect a decision to made in the next 24 hours.
