VANCOUVER, B.C. – With the Women's World Cup rolling into Canada and taking over BC Place for the next couple of weeks, the Vancouver Whitecaps are packing their bags and heading on the road.
A grueling five-game road stretch starts Wednesday evening when the 'Caps make the cross-country trip to Montreal to take on the Impact (8pm ET; TSN1 in Canada, MLS LIVE in US).
That game kicks off a six-week stint that will also see the Whitecaps play in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Colorado before they finally get to head back to Vancouver on July 12 to face Sporting Kansas City.
The tough stretch of games has the potential to either cement Vancouver's place near the top of the Western Conference standings or see them slip down into the chasing pack. But with the Whitecaps in fine form away from home this season, the trip is less daunting than it may have been in years past.
"Even last year, going on the road wasn’t that daunting for us," Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson told reporters at training. "We played well at times without getting results. Good teams are able to grind and dig out results away from home, and we’ve done that so far this year, but it can change at the drop of a hat. We know that.
"We know we’re a decent team on the road. We’re hard to beat. If we do the small jobs very well, we will create chances; it's whether we take our chances. Last game we did, which is why we won the game. The game before we didn’t, which is why we lost the game. It’s going to be, again, fine lines."
In a turnaround from previous seasons, Vancouver have been faltering at home – their 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake on Saturday notwithstanding – but seem to have found a winning formula to grind out results on the road, taking 10 points from their six away games so far this season and giving up only two goals in the process. That 1.67 points-per-game rate on the road is actually greater than Vancouver's 1.63 points per home game (13 points from eight games).
Robinson is hoping for more strong defensive showings on this long stretch of matches and has set a point total he is looking to achieve from the five games. He's just not sharing it.
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Vancouver are likely to continue to use some squad rotation for their upcoming travels to keep the lineup fresh, something they did not do during a busy stretch earlier in the season.
"There will be probably one or two fresh faces [against Montreal], because I think that’s important, especially when you go away from home," Robinson said. "Every team does it. We didn’t really do it in the early stages, and we sort of stumbled into San Jose, which was our third game in a week, which we’ve got to learn from. I’ll learn from. So there will be fresh faces, but we’ll put a team out that can hopefully win the game."
Vancouver will take their whole squad to Montreal before flying straight to Los Angeles for Saturday's game against the Galaxy (10:30pm ET; TSN2 in Canada, MLS LIVE in US), and Robinson sees the trip as an ideal bonding session for his players.
"Everyone’s coming," he said. "I think it’s important when you're on the road that you stick together as a group. We’ll take maybe a couple more [players] than we usually do. We win together, we lose together, we travel together."
