While Sentinels is expected to keep the rest of its starting VALORANT roster intact, outside of its recent IGL addition, the team is adding some experience and seemingly limitless content potential to its bench via a familiar face.
Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro is joining the Sentinels roster “as a substitute,” as noted by coach Kaplan in the team’s latest announcement today. As a flex player with a diverse agent pool and familiarity with various roles, Zellsis would be available on a weekly basis for Sentinels should they need to field a replacement for essentially any member of the starting roster.
Zellsis’ previous stint with Sentinels was short but memorable, joining the team alongside streaming superstar and former CS:GO pro shroud to compete in the 2022 North American LCQ. The duo joined forces with TenZ and former Sentinels players ShahZaM and dapr after a rough 2022 campaign for the once-dominant team but were eliminated after losses to The Guard and eventual LCQ winners 100 Thieves.
While Zellsis was initially led to believe he would retain a starting spot with Sentinels going into 2023, the team eventually did part ways with him at the end of August. After a brief return to Version1, Zellsis eventually signed with Cloud9 for the first VCT Americas season in 2023. While the initially billed C9 “superteam” did not last long, C9 was considered one of the best teams in the Americas region last year despite fielding two unproven rookies. Earlier this month, Zellsis announced that he had become an unrestricted free agent.
Looking ahead to the start of the 2024 season, Sentinels is expected to field a starting roster of TenZ, zekken, Sacy, pANcada, and johnqt, with Zellsis available as a substitute. It’s likely more teams will move away from using subs this year, with some teams reportedly considering less player spending, and with Riot no longer requiring teams to field six players on the roster.
