What Are These Playoffs You Speak Of?

Its been a long 4 years (especially this last one) for Rapids supporters but yes sports fan, tomorrow the Rapids return to the playoffs for the first time since the Seattle series in 2016.  They're off to Minnesota again to face the Loons in the 4-5 matchup.  Looks like there will be some snow showers early tomorrow morning but by game time it should be clear and in the 40s.  Kickoff tomorrow is scheduled for 5:30pm, but the game is on ESPN so that may be when a 20 minute preshow starts, or it might be a 5 minute preshow.  Either way the good news is that the game is on ESPN and not blacked out in the Denver area for the first time since the MLS Is Back tournament.

There was a lot of talk going into the international break that teams would be missing players due to having to quarantine after returning from international duty.  Specifically for the Rapids Diego Rubio was called up by Chile.  We found out this week that shortly into his time with Chile he came into general, but not close, contact with a person who tested positive for COVID and the decision was made then to have him return to Colorado to go through quarantine.  He's been training by himself in that time but he is available tomorrow (and I think he joined the team for training for the last day or two).

Minnesota had multiple players going on international duty, including former Rapids striker Kei Kamara, and on top of their injuries they were going to be very thin tomorrow.  MLS apparently realized that having so many players missing in the playoffs, for all playoff teams, was a bad look for the league and they arranged charters home for as many players as they could, which greatly reduced the required quarantine time.  As far as I know all of Minnesota's players were included so nobody on either side will be in quarantine for this game.  The Rapids were probably better off had MLS not done that, but I understand why the league made that decision.  And there's still an advantage to the Rapids having not travelled in the last week while Minnesota's players are recovering from some long flights, such as Kamara returning from Sierra Leone.

I feet pretty good about this lineup, the only real change I could see would be Trusty over Wilson.

Prediction: 2-1 win, goals by Bassett and Namli (in extra time).  This is likely to be a very cagey affair with nobody wanting to make a mistake.  I think the game plays out pretty evenly and forces an extra 30 minutes, where our youth and depth (not to mention lack of jet lag) gives us a slight edge.  Namli scores the winner on one of his ankle-breaking runs to put us through to the next round.