The HLTV Award Show panel's best five of 2022

31 experts have assembled the very first all-star HLTV squad of the year, powered by 1xBet.

After the end of last season our panel voted on six categories: Anchor, AWPer, Closer, Coach, IGL, and Opener of the year. Now that they have been announced at the HLTV Award Show, we can assemble our 'best five' of the year, a superteam of 2022.

Each expert picked a top three in each category, with their first pick getting five points, second three, and third one. The nominees that we announced are simply the three people who received the most points in each category.

For more explanation of the awards themselves, see the article below. All that is really important, however, is to know that 'Opener' is the star aggressive pack rifler, 'Closer' the passive or lurking star rfler, with 'Anchor' as the fill player with difficult CT-side positions.

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HLTV Award Show panel: Who voted and how it works

Anchor of the year

1. Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy (102 points)
2. Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic (69 points)
3. Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck (67 points)

Perfecto (102 points) emerged victorious to become the first name on the team sheet, beating out NAF and sjuush. Natus Vincere's stalwart support player had another decent year considering his roles, ending it with a 1.05 rating and 75.3% KAST.

22% of his deaths were traded and Natus Vincere won 44.7% of rounds where Perfecto was traded, the highest percentage of any player in our sample. He combines his strong trade play with a knack for surviving, staying alive for 79.0 seconds per round — another sign of strong anchor play on both sides of the map.

AWPer of the year

1. Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev (139 points)
2. Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov (62 points)
3. Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut (57 points)

The AWPer of the year was a heavyweight category, but s1mple dominated the voting to take home 139 points out of a possible 155. It was another supreme year for the Ukrainian sniper, leading the cohort in KPR (0.83), multi-kills (21.6%), and rating versus top 20 teams (1.25).

Only 41.4% of his kills in 2022 came with the Big Green, but that is by design. Like ZywOo, his rifling ability is such that the economy is less important than for other AWPers. Once it is in his hand, he is just as lethal as ever.

Closer of the year

1. Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov (111 points)
2. Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool (58 points)
3. Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato (42 points)

This award, for players that operate away from the entry pack, was also fairly straightforward. Ax1Le clinched the award above the likes of ropz ,KSCERATO, and Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken to mark another year of progress for the young rifler.

He is simply a statistical phenom. He had the highest rating versus both top five (1.29) and top ten teams (1.24) and finished 42.5% of his maps above a 1.30 rating. It is also notable that Ax1Le is one of a very select bunch of players to consistently perform well against FaZe, averaging a 1.23 rating against the strongest team of the year.

IGL of the year

1. Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen (141 points)
2. Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller (69 points)
3. Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali (45 points)

In the most dominant set of voting of all, karrigan sweeped this category with 141 points; only five experts did not put him in first place, and he was in every single person's top three.

2022 was, in many ways, karrigan's year: He is the face of FaZe, finally winning his Major in Antwerp and building the best team of his career, even better than his FaZe team of 2017 or TSM of 2015. He leaves the year with four trophies, having spent 25 weeks at number one, and now individual recognition to boot.

Opener of the year

1. Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač (95 points)
2. Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis (92 points)
3. Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund (45 points)

The tightest category of all was opener of the year, where NiKo (95 points) beat out YEKINDAR (92 points) by just 3 points. He lacked the volume of YEKINDAR's opening frags (0.15 to 0.17) but had a far higher success rate (56.7% to 50.1%), and was clear of YEKINDAR (and most of the world, to be fair) in most other statistics.

NiKo ended the year with 87.2 ADR, 1.31 Impact, and a kill every 91.7 seconds. G2 leave 2022 unsatisfied, victory at BLAST World Final contrasting with not even qualifying for the IEM Rio Major. In NiKo, however, there are no doubts: He is still in superstar form, and in his peak years.

Coach of the year

1. Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy (98 points)
2. Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström (55 points)
3. Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha (26 points)

The coach to mesh together all of these superstars is B1ad3, who would hope to have the same iron grip on this five as he has on Natus Vincere. Only NiKo had fewer points than B1ad3's 98 as votes were split all across the coaching category, but he was still left 43 points clear of RobbaN in second place.

B1ad3 only grabbed one trophy this year, BLAST Premier Spring Final, but his volume of votes show the credit our experts believe he is due for another year where Natus Vincere were in and amongst the very best teams in the world.

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This leaves us with this five-man lineup, an entry pack of karrigan and NiKo flanked by Perfecto and Ax1Le with s1mple on the AWP. As was hoped, it broadly makes sense on both sides of the map: karrigan and Perfecto can share the tougher CT roles, with NiKo and Ax1Le in the star rotator positions. It is truly an all-star side.