Timber Cruise: Portland Timbers 2, Vancouver Whitecaps 1

This piece started at the beginning of the season as a forest-level survey of each game. Occasionally zooming in to spotlight a player here or a stat there, the idea was to provide a comprehensive look at the Timbers’ most recent performance.

Now stepping back to the season-wide level, that job gets pretty easy:

After 34 games, there’s just no arguing with that. No talk of games in hand or strength of schedule. The Timbers won the West.

And they won it in a season that was complicated throughout by injuries and absences.