Within the space of less than a year, striker Mike Fucito has gone from one Cascadia rival to the other — via the Montreal Impact.

And, Chivas USA put Canadian defender Ante Jazic on the list. Yes, Jazic is in his mid-30s, but he’d be a significant upgrade for many teams in the fullback slot. He has become a regular starter for the Canadian national side. And, while his age is an issue, it’s hard to believe that a national-team starter can’t be of some value to someone.

The Montreal Impact will be able to choose from several Canadian players in Wednesday’s MLS Expansion Draft.

The Montreal Impact announced that three players from its NASL roster won’t be part of the team’s pre-MLS evaluation camp. And none of the six new players the Impact have invited to the camp carry Canadian passports.

The Montreal Impact will not take part in the NASL playoffs. Sure, the Impact did its part — crushing the last-place Atlanta Silverbacks by a 4-0 count on the final day of the regular season. But, the NSC Minnesota Stars preserved its one-point advantage over the Impact with a 2-1 win on the road over the first-place Carolina RailHawks.

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?

Undistracted from the task at hand in tonight’s match against the visiting FC Edmonton, getting the three points needed to close the gap between them and Minny, the Impact came through in the clutch with a 2-0 win and has almost climbed out of the hole that it has dug for itself with its dismal play in the first half of the season. Montreal is now just a single point behind Minnesota with each team having a game left on the schedule. Montreal owns the tiebreaker between the two teams.

Tonight’s adversaries played the final 60 minutes a man short but, despite this assistance, the best the Impact could manage was a 1-1 tie against the Puerto Rico Islanders.

As it turned out, things went a lot better for the Strikers than they did for the Impact. The teams avoided a third sister-kissing result with the home side coming away with their desired result in a 1-0 contest.

Only four of the dozen men who took to the pitch dressed in Impact blue for the team’s 2-0 triumph Saturday against the visiting NSC Minnesota Stars were participants in Montreal’s season opener in April.