Saturday night in Seattle, the Vancouver Whitecaps secured a 2-2 draw against the Sounders. While it was enough to secure their eighth Cascadia Cup, the result does put their hopes of a Supporters’ Shield trophy on life support, although at this point, I don’t think that’s Vancouver’s primary focus.

More than anything, this Vancouver Whitecaps team needs to get itself healthy in advance of the MLS Cup Playoffs, which appears to be a massive challenge at the moment. Both Belal Halbouni and Kenji Cabrera missed this match due to knocks, and things only got worse during the match, with second-half substitute Brian White being forced off the field with what looked like a re-aggravation of his hamstring injury.

Doom and gloom aside, the Whitecaps should be proud of this performance. Seattle has only lost one game at home all year, and Vancouver was starting Mathias Laborda and Ralph Priso at centreback, with no real options to replace them on the bench. If you’d told anyone those two would be playing together at the start of the season, you’d probably think the Whitecaps were languishing 12th in the West and things had gone seriously wrong. Laborda has been fantastic as...