Whitecaps Close Cascadia Summit With A Win

The Vancouver Whitecaps ended the Cascadia Summit with a flurry of goals as they defeated the Seattle Sounders 3-2 before a majority pro-Sounder crowd in Tukwila, Washington.  Both teams rolled their “B” teams with Jay Nolly, Greg Janicki and Wesley Knight the only Whitecaps to start both games.  The starting eleven for the Whitecaps were from left to right Nolly, Duckett, Boxall, Janicki, Knight, Teibert, Morfaw, Koffie, Khalfan, Salgado and Sanvezzo.

The Caps opened the scoring in the sixth minute as 1^st overall pick Omar Salgado got past a Seattle defender to deposit the ball in the back of the net.  Salgado, in fact, started the game on fire as he consistently got past the defenders to get more scoring opportunities and forced the Sounders to commit fouls.  In the 13^th minute goalkeeper Terry Boss of the Sounders mishandled a cross by Russell Teibert which resulted in a second goal.  The Whitecaps were caught looking in the box as Roger Levesque scored an easy one on Jay Nolly from close in right before halftime.

Whitecaps Roster Update: Who's Left To Sign

With less than three weeks to go till first kick the Vancouver Whitecaps have tough decisions to make as they have almost half of a roster to fill with the players they have in camp.  If they decide to completely fill the 30 man roster they will sign up to eight more international players and six domestic players.  There is no requirement for the Whitecaps to sign the full roster as they may want to leave some spots open for players(strikers) that become available at a later date.  There have some intriguing rumored strikers mentioned on internet sites but there has been no signing and the forward position is lacking finish.  This was witnessed by the most recent trip to Arizona where the team were outscored five to nil and lost to the three MLS opponents.  The following is a breakdown of who has earned a contract, who is on the bubble for a contract and who is unlikely to get signed.

Whitecaps Goalless Against MLS Rivals

The Whitecaps finished their second training trip set of matches in Arizona without a victory in four games including losing their last game today against LA Galaxy 2-0.  They failed to notch a single tally in their three matches against MLS opponents and were outscored five goals to nil.  The first squad played Friday against Chivas USA (1-0 L) and Monday against the Galaxy (2-0 L) while it was mostly a reserve squad on Saturday against the US U18 (2-2 D) and the game today against the reserve Galaxy side.

Whitecaps Local Broadcast Options Plus Other News

With TSN gaining MLS national rights in Canada to broadcast 13 Whitecaps matches on TSN/TSN2, there are 21 games available to be aired locally.  The Whitecaps have stated they will try to broadcast every match this season and as tweeted by Matt Kieltyka of Metro News the Caps hope to get it finalized in the next few days.  In addition to the games the Caps would most likely require their new partner to put together a weekly recap show with features on players.

If the Caps are looking to reach the widest audience then Rogers Sportsnet or CBC would be the obvious options.  Both networks have the announcers in place as well as the large potential audience and Sportsnet has multiple channels in their hand.  Since Sportsnet is owned by Rogers there may be some conflict with Bell being major sponsors of the Whitecaps.  Will CBC feel it's worth the cost to produce games for just a western Canadian audience instead of the national audience it normally did in the past.