The revolving door has been spinning as released players yield their spots to incoming men in an effort to stimulate scoring on a team that had not put one into the mesh since June and has not posted a victory since the fourth of last month. The first of these situations was rectified this evening but the second remained unchanged as the Impact played to a 1-1 tie, avoiding victory for the seventh straight game.

For several hundred youth soccer players in Pierrefonds, Wednesday night marked the long-anticipated return of the Montreal Impact, who have made the local suburb an annual stop on its public practice tour schedule.

At the start of the 2011 NASL season, the Montreal Impact had six French players on its roster, Now, that number is down to three. The Impact announced Wednesday what has been speculated about for the last week; that French attacker Idriss Ech Chergui and defender Richard Pelletier wouldn’t be back with the team.

A change is as good as a rest. For the Montreal Impact, that old adage certainly held true as they provided fans with their best effort in some time, coming away from their match with the Puerto Rico Islanders with a scoreless tie in front of a crowd announced at just over 10,000 at Stade Saputo.

It was announced as a sell-out crowd of 13,034 in Montreal this afternoon, but more than a few ticketholders found something else to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Those who did make their way to Saputo Stadium were treated to one of the Impact’s better outings as the home club played a scoreless tie against a visiting Fort Lauderdale team that had gone undefeated in their last four games.

The Montreal Impact traveled to the Caribbean and slugged it out with the Puerto Rico Islanders in a tough-tackling, mean-spirited match. But, two major defensive lapses ensured that the Impact left the island with nothing but a 2-1 loss to show for its effort.

But the Impact looked nothing like the team that beat FC Edmonton Saturday, gifting two first-half goals to the worst offence in the league. Atlanta’s 2-1 win at home allowed the club to earn its first NASL win of 2011, and asked many more questions of an Impact team that has looked unstoppable in its two wins over FC Edmonton this season, and awful against the rest of the league.

Both Montreal and FC Edmonton came into today’s match at Saputo stadium hoping for a positive outcome. But only the Impact and the large majority of the 11,232 spectators who turned out on the most clement day for soccer Montreal has seen so far this spring,were happy after 90 minutes. The Impact came out on top, 2-0, outshooting FCE 16-6 in a lopsided affair.