LAST SEASON:
Regular season record: 13-4-11, 4th place in Western Conference; lost to Montreal in title match
Record against active USL-1 teams: 6-1-8 (explanation)
RD's 2004 prediction: n/a
Seattle struggled to maintain a winning record before closing the 2004 season on a 6-0-1 hot streak than continued through the first two rounds of the playoffs.  Some call it luck.  Others, fluky.  All RD knows is that the Sounders couldn’t score on Montreal, either.  Maybe somebody should start a club…

 

SEACREST, OUT:
D Marco Velez 26 starts; to Puerto Rico
M Jonathan Bolanos (2+5=9) to Rochester
M Jason Farrell (2+2=6) to retirement
M Robbie Aristodemo to the Oompa Loompa factory in the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory remake
M Darren Sawatzky to retirement
F Roger Levesque (8+4=20) to San Jose; Player of the Week, two TOW
F Kyle Smith (4+1=9)
Levesque

 

BACK IN BLACK:
D Danny Jackson two TOW
F Welton Melo (10+0=20)
GK Preston Burpo (1.25 GAA, 8 SO)
Burpo

 

FRESH MEAT:
D Taylor Graham from Kansas City
M Andrew Gregor (2+2=6) from Portland
Five kids from various colleges
Gregor

 

LOCAL HISTORY:
- Rochester is 4-0-4 against Seattle in the regular season
- Rochester won 1-0 in Seattle, on a Chris Carrieri goal, on June 19, 2004 – their first ever win in Seattle
- Rochester’s previous meeting with Seattle was a 2-1 win at Frontier on August 11, 2001, with Stoian Mladenov assisting on both goals
- Seattle beat Rochester in their only post-season meeting – the 1996 league finals

 

THE LOWDOWN:
Here’s the bottom line: Seattle lost a lot of players and hasn’t done a whole lot to replace them (especially in the goal-scoring area).  Troubling?  You bet.  But so is the fact that Seattle had a losing record against active USL-1 teams, as well as the notion that both forward Craig Tomlinson and defender/captain Danny Jackson will miss the entire season with ACL injuries, not to mention Andrew Gregor's recently broken foot.  Making the title match is a pipe dream.  Making the playoffs is a long-shot.  Winning more games than they lose doesn’t seem entirely likely.  The Sounders will definitely be residing in the bottom-half of the table in 2005, even if Levesque is loaned back to Seattle for half of the season as planned.

 

RD's 2005 prediction: 8-4-16; 10th place and out of playoff contention

Back to the 2005 preview