Good Monday morning Caps fans. I hope you all are having a good start to the week and that your weekend went well.

It was a picture-perfect end to the regular season for the Whitecaps, who not only nabbed a 2-0 win at Montreal on Decision Day but were able to do it on their terms. Jesper Sorensen was able to rest the guys who needed it, give minutes to the guys who needed them, and avoid any injuries or suspensions. The fact that they dominated the Wooden Spoon winners, while not a surprise, was still a nice bonus.

As I mentioned on Friday, I figured now would be a good time to hand out some regular season awards. And, with any luck, postseason heroics might mean we have some other awards to hand out in a few weeks.

Player of the year: Edier Ocampo

There are several players who you could make a really good case for here and I almost went with Brian White just due to sheer volume of goals and how important he is to the overall attack. But while White had a couple of dips in form, Ocampo was consistently excellent this season. He is central to the overall attack and has grown massively in his defensive abilities. When this team is firing on all cylinders, it is increasingly because Ocampo can unlock both the wide players with his runs and movement and White with his crosses. If fullbacks got more love in defender of the year, Ocampo would have an excellent case. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was one player not around during the sprint season because a seven figure transfer fee seems almost inevitable at this point.

Honorable mentions: Brian White, Andres Cubas

Young player of the year: Tate Johnson

This basically boils down to a duel between Johnson and Jeevan Badwal. And while Badwal definitely took a step forward this year and was a very useful player in a number of positions, Johnson is quietly turning into one of the better left backs in the league. His passing and crossing is very effective and his defensive contributions have always been strong. Plus, he is up near the top of this team in xDawg.

Honorable mention: Badwal

Signing of the year: Bruno Caicedo

Caicedo vaulted himself into the conversation for best young player in MLS after turning in six goals and six assists in a little over 1,000 minutes. He looked consistently more effective off the bench against tired legs than as a starter but Bruno is also far from a finished product. That means he is likely to make the $1 million fee the Caps paid to bring him to Vancouver look like an absolute bargain. He should only get better and better from here on our, assuming he can build on his per 90 stats.

Honorable mentions: Yadaly Diaby, Aleksa Cvetkovic

Goal of the year: Diaby versus Austin FC

I’m probably forgetting about a Sebastian Berhalter banger here but Diaby’s curler past Brad Stuver was fantastic, reminiscent of Sidny Cabral’s stunner for Cabo Verde at the World Cup.

Honorable mentions: Sebastian Berhalter versus Portland, Sebastian Berhalter versus FC Dallas.

Overall assessment of the regular season:

Jesper Sorensen had the unenviable task of trying to follow up last season, with the degree of difficulty ratcheted up because the Caps weren’t sneaking up on anyone this year. In some ways, it might be tempting to say that the team fell short of those lofty expectations. They bowed out of CONCACAF Champions Cup play early, didn’t win the Canadian Championship, and stumbled down the stretch at times.

But that analysis would be insufficient. Simply put, Sorensen did a masterful job of navigating a season of tumult. Sebastian Berhalter departing mid season would be enough to crater most teams and that’s before you add in another season full of injuries, in which every key player missed meaningful time. The fact that this team bettered their point total from last season, won the west, and dominated the Cascadia Cup so thoroughly that they won it midway through the season, is an incredible testament to where this team is at. It might not feel as magical as 2025 (and the postseason success feels a bit more uncertain) but 2026 was arguably a better regular season top to bottom.

Sorensen also did a fantastic job of continuing to develop young players and seems to have turned three new signings (Bruno Caicedo, Yadaly Diaby, and Aleksa Cvetkovic) into key pieces. That was arguably the most important part of this season as it sets the Caps up very well for the sprint season, no matter how this postseason plays out. Make no mistake, this team will be judged on the playoffs after coming so close to MLS Cup glory that they could taste it. But they have left themselves in a position where they will be one of the favorites this season and next, something that was not guaranteed at the start of the year. That sounds like a pretty good year to me.

Shameless Self Promotion

I present to you the final post match recap of the regular season.

Best of the Rest

Yadaly Diaby is the latest Caps player to earn a call up over the international break.

A look at the Caps’ schedule and path to MLS Cup.

In awful news, Joey Saputo is putting CF Montreal up for sale and it doesn’t sound like he’s all that invested in keeping the team in Montreal. #SauverL’Impact!

Robin Fraser, Raphael Wicky, and Pascal Jensen are the first round of managers who are out of a job following the regular season.