Here are the ten things we learned from the second leg of the Conference Semifinals in the 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs.

1. The Playoffs Have Underwhelmed

There’s no getting around it. Thus far, the playoffs have been terrible.

Sunday should have been the best day of MLS of the year. It featured four back-to-back-to-back-to-back playoff elimination games, with all four home teams trailing going into the day.

Instead, the day flopped. Toronto-NYCFC was over after five minutes. Dallas never mounted a serious comeback against Seattle. The same was true for the Red Bulls against Montreal. Colorado-LA did feature drama, but it came in a penalty shootout after a truly abysmal game.

It’s been that kind of competition – littered with blowouts, underwhelming crowds, and underperforming teams.

This is the playoffs. It should feel different from the regular season. In all of the other four major American sports, that much is a guarantee. But so far in the 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs that simply hasn’t been the case.

2. Is the Playoff System Broken?

No. That said, MLS needs to look hard and fine-tuning its format. After the last two weeks, there are a number of concerns.

The away goals tiebreaker – installed somewhat bizarrely before last season – needs to go. Away goals are terrible for drama, as the New York clubs and Dallas can attest, and there’s little evidence to support the theory that they incentivize attacking play.

Three of the four higher-seeded teams went out on Sunday, with only Colorado advancing over LA on penalties. As Brian Straus of Sports Illustrated pointed out, this means that higher-seeded clubs have only outscored their lower-seeded opponents five times in sixteen conference semifinal meetings down the years.

There seems to be a pretty clear advantage in hosting the first leg of a playoff series. That shouldn’t be the case.

Lastly, Wednesday night Wild Card games after Sunday regular season finales are awfully tough for clubs trying to sell tickets. Seattle, Toronto, LA, and DC all drew fewer fans to their respective Wild Card games than they averaged throughout the regular season.

Bottom line, this is just a down year for playoff drama. Last year’s postseason was fantastic. But there is certainly room for improvement for MLS.

3. End of An Era in LA

The Galaxy were dumped out of the playoffs in Commerce City on Sunday afternoon, and there’s upheaval on the horizon this winter for the league’s most famous club.

Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane, who both started the game on the bench, are most likely gone. Landon Donovan’s future is unclear, and so, apparently, is Bruce Arena’s.

It’s Arena who made famous the line, “You need your best players to be your best players.” LA’s horses coming into the season were Keane, Giovani dos Santos, Gerrard, and Nigel de Jong.

On Sunday, Gerrard and Keane were on the bench, de Jong was in Turkey, and dos Santos was mostly silent before blazing his penalty over the bar. If you’re starting Alan Gordon and Baggio Husidic at this time of year, you’re probably not winning MLS Cup.

LA shouldn’t have any complaints. This season got away from them completely, and they have a big rebuilding job to come. Hopefully Arena will be around to helm it.

4. Tim Howard

Alongside Sebastian Giovinco, the star of this postseason has been Colorado’s 37-year-old goalkeeper Tim Howard.

The newly re-anointed USMNT #1 was a man amongst boys in the shootout against LA – making two crucial saves – and after the game, Rapids boss Pablo Mastroeni described Howard’s presence for Colorado as “transformational.”

He’s not wrong. Howard has played his best soccer since the 2014 World Cup since arriving in July, but he’s also filled a leadership void for a team that needed a veteran presence.

This Rapids story is something else. Can they ride 1-0 home wins all the way to a championship?

5. Speaking of Giovinco…

The best player in the league – note how the three MVP finalists fared on Sunday – was scintillating at Yankee Stadium last night, notching a hat-trick in Toronto’s demolition of NYCFC.

The league has never seen anything like Giovinco. Eight nights out of ten, he’s simply unplayable.

The guys around him aren’t bad either, and speaking of your best players being your best players, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley are both playing their best soccer for TFC right now.

Throw in a backline that isn’t a circus, and you have what is – by far – the best edition of Toronto FC we’ve ever seen. They’re going to take some stopping.

6. NYCFC Crash Out

It’s hard to imagine now, but ten days ago, New York City FC was the feel-good story of the season.

Then things unraveled in a hurry. Leg one, which reportedly led to a players revolt against Patrick Vieira’s tactics, was bad. Sunday’s leg two, which NYCFC lost 5-0 at home, was even worse. The 7-0 aggregate defeat is the worst such scoreline in MLS Cup Playoff history.

What happened? NYCFC’s garbage fire of a defense – which wasn’t aided by Vieira’s bizarre decision to dump Josh Saunders for Eirik Johannson one game before the start of the postseason – reared its ugly head.

The club also got exposed as somewhat soft. They faded late in Toronto, didn’t respond well to the adversity of losing leg one, and then didn’t respond at all to giving up an early goal on Sunday.

NYCFC always looked like unlikely MLS Cup contenders because of their defense, but while the defense was unsurprisingly disastrous in this series, it’s worth noting that the offense was also completely smothered.

Does the club blow its team up? All three of its DPs had good years at face value, but there could be change on that front in the winter considering the respective ages of Pirlo and Lampard. They’ll also have plenty of cap space once they dump Mix Diskerud.

Bringing in serious defensive help – a la TFC – has to be a priority. There’s more than enough young attacking talent to spend a DP spot on a center back like Portland and Montreal have done to great success.

7. As Do The Red Bulls

The New York Red Bulls came into the playoffs having not lost a game in four months. They proceeded to lose twice to Montreal, and exit the playoffs with an almighty whimper.

This tie went poorly from the off. Both Bradley Wright-Phillips and Sacha Kljestan missed huge chances across both legs, Kamar Lawrence and Kljestan got hurt, and Luis Robles was uncharacteristically spotty in goal.

The Red Bulls were still one of the best teams in the league this year – but unlike Dallas, who suffered a similar fate with injuries in this round – they didn’t win any hardware for their efforts.

It’s going to be another long offseason in Harrison.

8. Brian Schmetzer’s Interim Tag Removed

Seattle lost 2-1 in Frisco on Sunday night, but skated through their tie 4-2 on aggregate. It was a far cry from the insanity of this same game last year that Dallas won on penalties.

The big news for the Sounders this week ended up being that Brian Schmetzer is the club’s permanent coach. The news was oddly timed – coming late on Wednesday night before the game on Sunday – but no one in Seattle was complaining.

Schmetzer has been a Sounder for almost two decades. He is soccer in Seattle, and in a league when few clubs even have history worth shouting about, the job he’s done this year and his ascension to the top job merits plenty of celebration.

Whether he can work with Garth Lagerway better than Sigi Schmid could remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, Schmetzer has a Western Conference Championship to worry about – with the Rapids all that’s standing in the way of Seattle nabbing its first MLS Cup appearance in the unlikeliest of fashions.

9. Is Alejandro Moreno The Best ESPN Can Do?

Taylor Twellman, even if his delivery can be grating, is the best MLS color analyst in the game. The drop-off between him and ESPN’s number two MLS color man, Alejandro Moreno, is staggering.

Moreno joined Jon Champion for Colorado-LA – creating an almost uncomfortable gulf in class in the broadcast booth – and proceeded, over 120 minutes, to add literally nothing to the broadcast.

Moreno speaks almost exclusively in clichés and platitudes, and he doesn’t appear to be overly familiar with majority of the players on the field. Most frustrating is that Moreno’s commentary doesn’t change week-to-week – he said more or less the same things this week that he said during Montreal-New York last week.

ESPN can and should be doing better for playoff games. Just as a good commentator like Champion – who was excellent, as usual – can add to a game, an unbearable commentator can detract from it.

10. Who Makes MLS Cup?

By the time we hit the Conference Finals, we’re usually down to the real contenders. Four teams who both playing exceptionally well, and would make worthy champions.

That’s certainly the case this year. Toronto has more talent than Montreal, but the Impact have found the magic formula over the last four weeks. The good news, if you’re a neutral, is that these teams and cities despise each other. The Eastern Conference Final edition of the 401 Derby is going to be must-watch TV.

Seattle, meanwhile, has to bury Colorado with multiple goals in the first leg of the Western Conference Final at CenturyLink. Anything less than a two-goal deficit, and the Rapids will figure out a way to get it done at home.

MLS breaks now for the international window, with USA-Mexico fast approaching on Friday night in Columbus.