He’s going into the week with an optimistic outlook. Despite the Impact’s disappointing finish in its final D-2 season Lowery feels he’s shown enough to warrant serious consideration.

The Whitecaps could not have had a worse opponent scheduled for the MLS opening of B.C. Place than the Portland Timbers.The Timbers not only, ahem. blessed the new Bell Pitch at B.C. Place with a 1-0 win in front of sold-out throng of 21,000, the Whitecaps’ Cascadia rivals had the chance to display just how wide the competitive gap is between the two teams that jumped from second division to MLS in 2011.

In a season where Toronto FC has frittered away over a dozen points due to late-game breakdowns and failures to defend set pieces, it's perhaps fitting that both demons combined at once in the game that officially eliminated the Reds from the postseason hunt. Thierry Henry's 88th-minute equalizer off of a corner kick left TFC with just one point in a 1-1 draw with the New York Red Bulls on Saturday at BMO Field.

Toronto FC's 1-1 draw with Pumas UNAM may have taken place on Tuesday evening, but the seeds were planted last Saturday. That was the day the Reds played their first choice Starting XI in an away league match against Chivas USA, a curious decision given that the club had the vastly more important CONCACAF Champions League date with Pumas in just three days' time.

Both Dwayne De Rosario and Juan Pablo Angel scored four times in the past week. But, in the end, the Player of the Week balloting wasn’t close.The Canadian beat the Colombian handily, taking 13 out of 16 first-place votes from the membership of the North American Soccer Reporters.

Aron Winter gambled, and rolled snake eyes.With a massive, must-win CONCACAF Champions League against Pumas UNAM coming up on Tuesday, and with Toronto FC all but eliminated from the MLS playoff race, the Reds’ technical director and coach decided to start his best available XI Saturday against Chivas.

Dwayne De Rosario has done a lot in his storied MLS career; four championships, MVP nominations, goals of the year.But he could do something this season that no other MLS player has done since the league kicked off in 1996; win the MVP award in a season in which the winner was traded.

Yes, collapses can occur in sport. But the Reds would need to go on a perfect run to finish the season and then need not one, not two, but three teams to all collapse. To have all three falter would be a statistical anomaly.

Danny Koevermans struck again for Toronto FC, as his first half goal proved to be the difference in TFC's 1-0 win over Tauro FC on Tuesday night at BMO Field.

But, then, there’s the matter of Montreal. The Impact is red-hot at the moment, earning 14 points out of the last 21 on the table. With the additions of MLS loaners Miguel Montano and Ryan Pore, the attack has been transformed. Evan Bush is the best keeper in NASL.Wouldn’t it suit Carolina best to ensure that the team most likely to make a Cinderella run from a low seed didn’t make the playoffs at all?