VANCOUVER — By all accounts, a Seattle Sounders loss in their road match against the Vancouver Whitecaps on Sunday would have been an expected, if not reasonable, result.
Consider the factors against them: Clint Dempsey is gone for the year, Nicolas Lodeiro was suspended because of yellow-card accumulation, Andreas Ivanschitz was a late scratch due to a neck strain, and before Alvaro Fernandez exited with a strained left hamstring in the ninth minute.
The squad was run so thin that it had to call recently reactivated forward Aaron Kovar at 11 p.