The Montreal Impact has lost defender Zurab Tsiskaridze. The team announced Tuesday that the Georgian-born, naturalized American has gone back to the United States to deal with family matters. Judging by the language in the release, it’s safe to assume that Tsiskaridze won’t be back.

As the Montreal Impact prepares to face the Fort Lauderdale Strikers at Stade Saputo Wednesday night, the team has brought another familiar face back into the fold. The club announced Tuesday that Canadian striker Marco Terminesi, a deal that lasts until the end of the 2011 season.

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.

Projected to come out on the short end of a one-sided affair against the relentlessly offensive visiting Whitecaps, Marc Dos Santos’s pink and black-kitted crew surprised by showing far better ensemble play than they did on Saturday in its NASL game against Tampa Bay FC and made the game a close one, losing a 1-0 decision to Major League Soccer's Vancouver representative.

While the tornadoes that touched down in the Raleigh area earlier today may have kept some fans away from WakeMed Soccer Park, the weather did not put a damper on the Carolina RailHawks, who defeated the Impact 2-1, handing Montreal its second straight loss to open the NASL season.