If Friday was your first day following MLS, all you’d need to do is look at the second stage of the Re-Entry Draft to comprehend just how many players have called Toronto FC home over the club’s relatively short six-year existence.

As it stands, nine players from the three Canadian MLS teams will be on offer in Friday’s MLS Re-Entry Draft.

Still, the move will likely dampen the enthusiasm of TFC fans who hold the moral high ground over Montreal and Vancouver supporters; TFC fans could claim their team’s Canadian content was much higher than the Impact and Whitecaps. But, if the three Academy grads and Cann aren’t replaced by other Canadian prospects, that moral high ground won’t be as lofty in 2013 as it was in 2012.

"How many teams in MLS can have five starters out and put on a performance like that?" Mariner asked. "When you ask players to come in after months of layoffs… if you factor those things in, with Portland having most of their guns firing and us coming out with 2-2, I'm reasonably happy with what's going on."

Montreal coach, Jesse Marsch, fielded a reworked starting XI to begin the game against Toronto FC. The decisions paid off as the Impact got off to a good start, grabbed a lead in the early going and held it — despite giving up a goal in the late going — to put its historic first MLS win into the books.

At halftime, TFC defied critics by being tied 2-2 with a team that hasn’t lost at home this season. But, by the 64-minute mark of the game, it was all but over.

Toronto FC has very little margin for error. For a team that's struggling to both consistently defend and, increasingly, struggling to score goals, one mistake is all it takes to waste a strong performance. Such was the case on Saturday, when TFC largely outplayed the Columbus Crew but came up on the wrong end of a 1-0 result at BMO Field.

The club confirmed Tuesday that Designated Player Torsten Frings will miss the next four to six weeks with a right hamstring strain.

Aron Winter outmanaged and outcoached Arena in the second leg. Winter made the right decisions, while Arena struggled to adjust. And the coaching decisions could very well have been the deciding factors in the quarters.

If, last July, someone was to predict that Toronto FC would be the last MLS team standing in the CONCACAF Champions League, they’d have been offered some pretty sweet odds.