Gpk will stand-in for Team Spirit Dota2 team
Danil "Gpk" Skutin will replace Yegor "Ergon" Kozlov at Spirit for the upcoming WePlay! Pushka League and Epic Prime League games as a stand-in player, the Russian Dota2 team has announced.
Gpk has joined Anton “DyrachYO” Shkredov, Vasily “AfterLife” Shishkin, Alexander “Immersion” Hmelevskoy and Mihail “Misha” Agatov in their journey through WePlay! Pushka League and Epic Prime League as unveiled by the Russian Dota2 team. He will replace Ergon, who is reportedly having health problems, however, Spirit did not specify what kind of health issues their No.2 is dealing with.
"Unfortunately, due to health problems, Yegor 'Ergon' Kozlov will not be able to participate in the upcoming matches of our Dota squad," read the announcement.
"Danil 'Gpk' Skutin will play for us as a stand-in in the upcoming WePlay Pushka League and Epic Prime League games."
With that, Gpk became the third Gambit player to stand-in for one of the teams at WePlay! Pushka League, besides Gambit's captain Artsiom “fng” Barshak who teamed up with Alliance and Maxim “Shachlo” Abramovskikh who is standing in for Cyber Legacy.
Gambit were initially planned to participate at the event but withdrew from the event, citing their inability to properly prepare for the event due to lack of an ideal bootcamp set-up as the main reason for their resignation. Most recently, Gambit participated at ESL One Los Angeles Online tournament, where they placed bottom-four, which as stated by the team was a result of their players playing from home, instead of from a team-owned facility.
Due to Gambit’s refusal to participate at the event, their players started to look for other options to take part at the tournament, and since many teams struggled with fielding a full team due to COVID-19 pandemic, that left many players stranded in their home countries, they were quick to find a team to play with.
Gambit's captain fng has been playing with Alliance since the tournament began, helping the Swedish esports organisation secure a playoffs berth with an admirable 4-1 record, whereas his teammate, Shachlo has been picked up by Cyber Legacy at the start of May as a replacement for Oleg "LastHero" Demidovich. Cyber Legacy have previously fielded gpk in their fixture against Empire Hope, where the Russian No.2 helped CL secure a reverse-sweep and a direct bye into the semi-finals.
With Pushka League entering its final days of the group stage matches, gpk will help Team Spirit in their final two fixtures against HellRaisers and Virtus.pro, where Spirit will be chasing the final ticket leading into the playoffs. As it stands now, Spirit are holding onto a 1-3 record, which sits them one win behind FlyToMoon and Virtus.pro, effectively meaning their chances of making it into the second stage of the tournament very slim. If Team Spirit fail to finish top-four in their group, they could be facing elimination from the tournament and relegation into the second division of Pushka League.
Team Spirit Dota2 roster is now:
Anton “DyrachYO” Shkredov
Danil “gpk” Skutin
Vasily “AfterLife” Shishkin
Alexander “Immersion” Hmelevskoy
Mihail “Misha” Agatov
