2019 Scheduling News

Some of this broke a few days ago but the Rapids have been so busy making moves that I haven't had a chance to cover it.  Today's Rapids-centric news is a good time to go through it.

The Rapids will open the season at home on March 2nd against Portland it was announced today.  Kickoff will be at 4pm.  Hard to believe that's only 72 days away!  10 weeks from Saturday!

The Rapids also announced their preseason schedule today.  Cam opens January 21st (a month from tomorrow!) and after a couple of days of getting everybody worked up the team immediately heads to Florida for a week of training in Bradenton capped off with a scrimmage against new MLS team Cincinnati FC.  Then after a couple of days in Denver its out to Chula Vista, CA for 3 weeks of training including matches against the PDL Ventura County Fusion, University of San Diego, a morning scrimmage against the USL Las Vegas Nights followed by an evening game against them at their home field in Vegas (I assume the morning game will largely be reserves while the evening gated admission game will largely be starters), a game against the Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park (the new name of the Stub Hub Center) and then another scrimmage the next morning against LA (again, likely reserves that didn't play the night before).  Only the evening games against Vegas and LA are open to the public.  Then the Rapids return home a couple of days before the opener.

The one odd thing about this schedule is that the team only spends about 7 days in Denver during the preseason, the rest of the time they'll be at sea level in Florida and California.  Kind of a surprise given the first game is at home at mile high altitude.

Last week the league announced new scheduling for the season and playoffs.  The season starts March 2nd but finishes in early October, about 3 weeks earlier than recent seasons.  This allows the league to get the whole playoffs in between the October and November FIFA windows, with MLS Cup on November 10th.  The league also changed the playoff format, adding an additional 7th team per conference and switching to a straight singe game knockout bracket with the higher seed hosting.  So in the first round the conference champions get a bye and the 2nd seed hosts the 7th seed, 3rd hosts 6th, and 4th hosts 5th.  The key here is that the brackets won't be re-seeded after each round so the 7th seed gets the winner of the 3-6 game if they win, they don't switch to playing the 1 seed and so on.

Overall I find this a mostly positive change, though it feels too early to add a 7th team to the playoffs, I would have preferred they waited until the league got closer to 28 teams.  Also there's a pretty solidly confirmed rumor that starting in 2020 the season will start in February, the compressed schedule this year is due to CBA requirements for offseason length that prevented them from starting any earlier than the first weekend of March because of when the 2018 season ended.  With 2019 ending earlier they'll be able to move the start of 2020 earlier.  That's going to suck for us Rapids fans if we have to sit in the cold for a home game in February again.

One last piece of news today unrelated to scheduling.  The January National Team camp rosters were unveiled this morning and both Acosta and Rosenberry will be heading out to Chula Vista early to take part.  That's great for them and the Rapids.  I'm guessing Acosta will get playing time in the January friendlies, Rosenberry may or may not.

Barring any big news tomorrow this will be my last update before Christmas.  I hope all my readers (if there are any left after my hiatus) have a happy holidays!