Good Monday morning Caps fans — hope you all rested up this weekend and your week ahead is a good one as we continue full speed ahead with summer.

Well, hopefully Friday night’s performance in Los Angeles is the nadir of the Caps’ season. I figured there would be at least one egg laid on this upcoming road trip but I didn’t see it coming in the form of a 3-0 thrashing at the hands of the worst team in the league but here we are.

This was one where everything went wrong. The defense was out of sorts, Yohei Takaoka gifted the opposition a goal, the midfield had no coherent positioning and could often be taken out of things by one well weighted pass and the attack was limp. Even the one positive – the return of Jayden Nelson, who sparked the offense for a ten minute spell – was neutered after he was given a second yellow and sent off for kicking the ball away late in the second half. For a guy who has missed several matches, that is unacceptable.

We can dive deeper into why this sucked but a lot of it simply boils down to the fact that the Caps are missing so many good players and their depth was never really crafted with the expectation of playing guys like Daniel Rios in this many meaningful matches. We can argue about whether that should have been the case and whether Jesper Sorensen should have been more aggressive in turning to a guy like Nelson Pierre. But this hasn’t been the fully functioning team we saw early in the season in awhile because, well, most of those players haven’t been on the pitch at the same time.

There will be an opportunity to bolster depth in a few weeks when the secondary transfer window opens and the Caps helped give themselves some wiggle room by buying out Damir Kreilach on Friday. Kreilach has hardly featured this season and hasn’t looked effective in over a year. It was a rare Axel Schuster loss bringing him in, though one imagines his experience and locker room presence has been considerable. And Kreilach has been a consummate professional.

But clearing over $400k in cap space is a considerable win for a team that is running up against some roster building constraints. Between that and an open U22 spot, there is flexibility heading into the summer window to make some meaningful moves that could make sure this team is in a good spot heading into the playoffs, which is ultimately the goal here.

We will have another busy week ahead of us, with the home leg of the Canadian Championship tie and another road match against Colorado next weekend. The good news is, come what may, the Gold Cup final is tonight and that means Brian White and Sebastian Berhalter should be back in Vancouver in the next 24 hours or so. Expecting them for Wednesday might be asking too much but one imagines they’ll slide right back in for the Rapids match. Then we can take fuller stock of where things are at. For now, well, probably best to try and forget about Friday.

Shameless Self Promotion

More of the gory details for how things went down on Friday and the report card grades are no less rough.

Best of the Rest

The Caps may have lost but their subs got a small victory by delaying the fireworks show.

Horrible scenes in Seattle, as Stefan Frei suffered a head injury and had to be taken off via ambulance. Best wishes to him on a speedy recovery.

What does the Gold Cup final say about Canada’s biggest CONCACAF rivals?

Ryan Gauld will be back this year. Right? … Right?