Here are the ten things we learned from week 22 of the MLS season.

1. Trouble In Seattle

The Sounders were demolished 3-0 by the Vancouver Whitecaps at home on Saturday night. The loss, Seattle’s seventh in their last eight games, hurt for a number of reasons. It happened with Brad Evans, Stefan Frei, and Clint Dempsey all back in the lineup, pushed the team’s scoreless streak towards 400 minutes, and came against the one team in MLS that Seattle has always historically dominated.

Oh, and ‘Caps center-back Pa Modou Kah scored the game’s two decisive goals. He had one in his three-year MLS career coming in.

The Sounders have now lost more games than they’ve won this season, a remarkable statistic for the defending Supporters’ Shield winner. Long-term, Seattle should be okay. They’ve been blessed with a considerable playoff cushion in the Western Conference, where there is a huge divide between sixth and seventh place.

But if Saturday night proved one thing, it’s that Obafemi Martins is this team’s most important player. It was Martins who was injured and battling a furious Eddie Johnson for minutes when the Sounders collapsed late in 2013 – the one stretch in Dempsey’s MLS career when he hasn’t lit the league on fire.

Martins’ industry and understanding with Dempsey is unparalleled, and once he’s back, Seattle should start clicking again. That return isn’t far off – it could come as soon as next week in LA.

But Seattle has other issues. First and foremost is a murderous schedule from here on in – one that is going to make those recent losses to the likes of San Jose, Colorado, Chicago, and Philadelphia all the more painful.

The central midfield is looking old all of the sudden, and Erik Friberg hasn’t made the immediate impact that the Sounders were hoping for. The team also needs better from Lamar Neagle and Chad Barrett – whose goals were massive, underrated reason that the Sounders were so successful last year.

There’s still a chance that the Sounders could buy down Osvaldo Alonso’s contract and bring in another DP, but with CONCACAF Champions League play coming up, Seattle is now in a very real hole – and the last thing this team wants is to open the postseason with a one-game playoff at a place like Sporting Park or the StubHub Center.

2. Is It Time To Take Vancouver Seriously? 

The Whitecaps have looked more pretender than true contender for most of the year, but the demolition of Seattle has done plenty to change that perception.

It wasn’t just that Vancouver won. It was how they played – positive, progressive, and smart – the same type of soccer the ‘Caps played a few weeks ago in Portland, when they were much the better team in a 1-1 draw. Vancouver wasn’t playing like that last year, or even early this year.

This is uncharted territory for the Whitecaps, who have been bounced in the Wild Card round in their only two postseason appearances and never hosted a playoff game. There is a belief around this group – which has a nice mix of youth blooded by Robinson and veteran leadership in defense – that they can win a Cup.

A ton of credit has to go to Carl Robinson. His move from Russell Teibert to Gershon Koffie in central midfield just ahead of the increasingly imposing Matias Laba has allowed Vancouver to be more comfortable with the ball and find a rhythm in transition that they haven’t had before.

Impressively, much of this recent success has come without Pedro Morales. But he’s back now, as evidenced by his superb free-kick on Saturday, and the ‘Caps have more true weapons than ever to plug in around him – including a revitalized Darren Mattocks.

But there is one thing that should make Whitecaps fans giddy over anything else: Vancouver has been the best road team in the league this year, notching seven wins away from BC Place. Road form is what wins playoff series, and plenty of Vancouver’s Western Conference competitors have been awful away from home all year.

3. It’s Not Your Year

Saturday was the highest-scoring day in league history, with 39 goals banged in across eight games. The biggest contributor of those eight games was Real Salt Lake – DC United, a match that finished 6-4 to DC at RFK Stadium.

For RSL, nothing says it’s not your year like scoring four goals on the road, only to lose after blowing a two-goal lead and conceding six.

But it’s still not DC’s year either. It’s not a good sign when you concede goals within the first minute of the game in back-to-back weeks and need five goals to beat the seventh best team in the Western Conference at home. Bill Hamid can’t return soon enough.

4. Praise For Mark Rogondino

With the Women’s World Cup and CONCACAF Gold Cup, as well as a multitude of international friendlies, on FOX airwaves this summer, the #1 FOX MLS team of John Strong and Alexi Lalas hasn’t called any MLS regular season action since early June.

The result has been a number of stand-in announce teams for FOX’s MLS games, with Steve Cangialosi, Brad Friedel, Brian Dunseth, and Tony Meola all doing a nice job in their various capacities.

But the Southern California based Mark Rogondino, somewhat of an outsider to the national TV soccer scene, did an especially good job on a number of games this summer.

Providing a break from Strong, who has plenty of strong qualities but can also suffocate a match with his breathless and overbearing style, Rogondino struck a solid balance between letting games breath and rising to the big moments with some terrific goal calls.

His performance in Portland’s 4-1 win over Seattle in late June stands out, as does his work in Real Salt Lake’s dramatic win over Sporting Kansas City. Strong and Lalas should be back for the rest of the season next week, but here’s hoping that Rogondino gets more looks for national MLS games going forward.

5. Rapids In Free-Fall 

Reports surfaced this weekend that the Colorado Rapids have sold promising young midfielder Shane O’Neill to Apollon Limassol in Cyprus, a club that is used more as a layover than a final stopping point for a number of players, like former Toronto FC defender Doneil Henry, who ended up at West Ham last year.

There has been no conformation, but O’Neill’s ouster from Colorado wouldn’t be a surprise. The club sold DeShorn Brown earlier this year as the breakup of Oscar Pareja’s young, promising Rapids team that made the playoffs in 2013 continues.

Pablo Mastroeni just hasn’t had the patience nor the commitment to that young core in his two years at the helm, and it doesn’t exactly take a genius to see that the Rapids are adrift with little talent, no direction, and no clue.

Glued to the bottom of the Western Conference table for almost a year now, Colorado is in a tough spot. Mastroeni is a club legend who was strong-armed into taking the managerial job in the first place when the Rapids were desperate after Pareja left for Dallas after 2013, and firing him would hurt all parties involved.

But there doesn’t appear to be another option. This Rapids team has been gutted and is now filled with middling MLS veterans right around the time that they were supposed to be gearing up for an MLS Cup run

The Rapids front office is a notoriously touchy bunch – it got the team’s MLSsoccer.com beat-writer fired last year – and the team has an absentee owner in Stan Kroenke. That setup, plus Mastroeni, minus the kids that made this team so exciting just a few years ago, and the All-Star game that everyone was looking forward to, makes the future look pretty bleak in Commerce City.

6. Refereeing

The problem with MLS refereeing isn’t that there aren’t any good referees. There are plenty of guys who are terrific, and one of those guys, Hilario Grajeda, is readying to return to the fold after rehabbing from a major surgery.

The problem is that the league’s bad referees are terrible, and they keep getting assignment after assignment. Jorge Gonzalez took plenty of heat from Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes after an almost comically bad performance this weekend at Sporting Park.

Juan Guzman had several questionable calls in the LA – Colorado match too, after completely lost control of the Portland – Vancouver game two weeks ago and had a near brawl on his hands at the final whistle. He’s just not good enough.

Neither is the league’s longest-tenured referee Kevin Stott, who continues to fail to understand how to properly apply the advantage rule and make haphazard and heavy-handed calls from bad positions all over the field. Baldomero Toledo isn’t much better, and he’s also on the field almost every week.

PRO is working on it. Peter Walton is committed. One solution is nabbing referees from other leagues, like PRO did with MLS’ best ref, Irishman Alan Kelly, ahead of last season.

7. Altidore’s Frustrations Continue

It’s been a rough summer for Jozy Altidore. The US’ answer at striker since 2009 was cut from the Gold Cup team after the group stage by Jurgen Klinsmann, who had some harsh parting words for his forward, despite there being no real alternative for Altidore in the team.

This weekend, Altidore was sent off – while wearing the captain’s armband – for Toronto FC at the New England Revolution for kicking out at Revs center-back Jose Goncalves. It was an easy red – one borne out of massive frustration – and it will could cost Altidore more than the mandatory one-game ban.

Since Jozy’s best year – really, the only year – of his career at AZ in Holland, all Altidore has experienced is disappointment after disappointment. From Sunderland, to the World Cup last summer, to his return to MLS this year.

It’s not like Altidore has been bad – he has a decent seven goals – but he sure hasn’t lit the world on fire. He’s maybe the eighth best striker in MLS right now, and he’s likely not one of the five most important players on his team. He sure isn’t worth what he’s being paid.

Altidore is talented, but his woes are worsening. TFC needs him to be stronger mentally if they’re going to make a playoff run, and Altidore owes it to himself to turn his career around.

When he comes back from his suspension, he needs to wipe the slate clean.

8. The Biggest Game of the Week 

With New England starting to turn things around and Jermaine Jones getting back on the field, there appears to be just one playoff spot truly up for grabs in either conference: Sixth place in the East.

That’s why Saturday afternoon’s meeting between NYCFC and the Montreal Impact at Yankee Stadium was so important: The winner would control its destiny with Orlando lurking just behind.

And thanks to NYCFC’s dogged and continued defensive fragility, it was the Impact who ran out 3-2 winners in their last game before the start of the Didier Drogba era.

Jason Kreis is going to have to figure out how to get plenty of really good players who don’t defend into his midfield and figure out the backline, while the Impact will be active at the close of the transfer window trying to move a number of players from a fairly unbalanced roster.

But it’s their race to lose now – and the atmosphere going forward at Stade Saputo should reflect that.

9. Columbus Hits Rock Bottom

The situation is pretty much set in stone and written in all caps at this point: Either the Columbus Crew will figure out its defense, or it’ll play a maximum of one playoff game in November.

Saturday night was about as bad as it’s been. The Crew gave away five goals to a cold Orlando City team in a big loss that sets Columbus back again in the Eastern Conference.

Gregg Berhalter hasn’t had any answers all year. The signing of Ghanaian international Harrison Afful could help. Then again, it might not. Samuel Inkoom, also a Ghana World Cup vet, hardly did the trick for DC United when they brought him on in the middle of last season. Inkoom is no longer in MLS, and he’s being sued for missing rent payments and property damage in DC.

Even in Afful is great, he’s still not a center-back – and Columbus desperately need a commanding center-back. Michael Parkhurst is struggling, and he’s not a natural center-back anyway. It’s not an unheard-of situation. Portland was in the same boat last year, and signed Liam Ridgewell.

There’s still a little time left in the transfer window. The Crew needs to figure things out, or watch a promising season needlessly slip away.

10. Only In MLS… 

It was a wacky weekend, and there wasn’t a more fitting way for it to end than the best team in the league going on the road to the worst team in the league and comfortably getting beaten 2-0. Welcome to the show.