Gentlemen, Start Your Oars

We'll miss these two on the call this year

Welcome to the 2023 regular season!  More importantly, welcome to the end of the Altitude blackout!  At 6pm tomorrow on FS1 and Apple TV the Rapids will start their campaign in Seattle, where rain and snow is expected at game time.  So its going to feel like Colorado but with noticeably more oxygen.  After a training camp spent in Mexico and Orlando it will be a bit of a shock for the Rapids.  Speaking of oars, Seattle is home to one of the best crew teams in the world, the University of Washington crew team.  Soon to be featured in the upcoming movie The Boys in the Boat, about the 1936 U.S. crew team that took down Hitler's top rowers at the Olympics (the U.S. team was the defending collegiate crew champions, the UW boat).

The first game of the season also means the first availability report and its...not great:

Availability Report:

OUT: GK Marko Ilic (waiting on visa), F Yaya Toure (knee), FW Diego Rubio (knee)

QUESTIONABLE: D Aboubacar Keita (knee), M Jonathan Lewis (knee), M Jack Price (back)

No surprise with Ilic and Toure and Keita are still coming back from their blown ACL's last season.  Lewis got 0 minutes in preseason so you had to know something was going on there.  The big two names are Diego Rubio and Jack Price, neither of which were expected.  The Rapids have said they will have more information on Rubio's injury next week but its not MCL/ACL related, so that's good.  My guess is that no matter how insignificant Price's injury is, he won't start and likely won't play.  Turf + snow is not a combination where you want to risk exacerbating an injury.

The midfield is a bit hard to predict given the injuries.  Bassett and Cabral will start, not sure about Ronan, Acosta, or Nicholson, but that seems to be where Fraser is leaning based on preseason.  Yapi feels like the only real choice up front without Rubio.

Prediction: 1-0 loss.  If we had Price and Rubio I can see us getting a point, or maybe even a win, but without them I don't see where the offense is going to come from.  With the ugly weather and our normal lack of success in Seattle I'm expecting we'll give up a sloppy goal and show no real ability to get back into the game,