The Col­orado Rapids got crushed in the first round of the MLS Cup Play­offs, their promis­ing sea­son com­ing to an igno­min­ious end Sun­day night in Min­neso­ta. The Rapids con­ced­ed a goal quick­ly to Min­neso­ta Unit­ed FC, didn’t cap­i­tal­ize on their chances to equal­ize, and then the wheels came off in an even­tu­al 3–0 rout.

In end­ing a four-year play­off drought, the Rapids accom­plished one of their main goals for this sea­son. But does the dis­ap­point­ing effort out­weigh the club’s achievement?

Here are three points from the Rapids sea­son-end­ing loss:

Moment too big?

The Rapids had one of the youngest teams in MLS this sea­son. Most of the ros­ter had nev­er played in the play­offs and Colorado’s best play­ers were all inex­pe­ri­enced. The Rapids came out fly­ing in each half yet they couldn’t keep it up and lit­tle mis­takes were imme­di­ate­ly cap­i­tal­ized on by the Loons.

“We weren’t clin­i­cal enough and we opened up towards the end look­ing for a score,” Jack Price said. “We have to be more clin­i­cal and we’ll have to learn from this. This is a real­ly young group and we’ll come back stronger next year.”

Both Price, the cap­tain, and head coach Robin Fras­er said the errors made by the Rapids were not due to a lack of prepa­ra­tion but based on execution.

“It was a rel­a­tive­ly young team in a big sit­u­a­tion,” Fras­er said. “I thought we weren’t at our best, but we still cre­at­ed sev­er­al real­ly good chances.”

Fras­er believed his team could’ve won the match.

That take­away may be steep. This was the third time in his tenure Col­orado has been shut, all this sea­son after long layoffs.

Ironman sidelined

Anoth­er key ele­ment to the match was iron­man Sam Vines start­ing the match on the bench, then play­ing for only 20 minutes.

“Vines was hurt, as a result, we want­ed to be cau­tious with him,” Fras­er said. “We thought if we were chas­ing the game we’d get him some ser­vice, which he did.”

If Vines was healthy enough to play, why didn’t he start? He played every minute of the Rapids’ reg­u­lar sea­son. The home­grown left back was one of the most impor­tant play­ers on the club. Instead, Kel­lyn Acos­ta, who hadn’t played as a defend­er in years, shift­ed from the mid­field down to Vines’ spot. Acos­ta was fine, but it’s easy to see a snow­ball effect.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the Rapids picked up Steven Beitashour to back up Vines recent­ly. The wing­back was a sta­ple of LAFC’s line­up last sea­son when they cap­tured the Sup­port­ers Shield. He also got plen­ty of play­ing time in Toron­to a few years back, win­ning MLS Cup for a club Fras­er worked with as an assistant.

“Beitashour hasn’t played in a year, and I didn’t think it was fair to throw him into a play­off game hav­ing not played in a year,” Fras­er said.

Fras­er also start­ed Jonathan Lewis, who had been com­ing off the bench more recent­ly as the high priced Nico­las Benezet came on as a sub. Benezet fin­ished his sea­son with no goals, though the offense was clear­ly bet­ter when the French winger was on the field and Lewis worked as a spark­plug to end contests.

Up the ‘Pids

The youth may have hurt in Sunday’s play­off matchup but over­all this sea­son was a step for­ward. With the younger play­ers the Rapids have some­thing to build upon.

“We’re a young team and moments like these are good for teams like this because you can see where we went wrong,” Price said. “I don’t think the boys at any point fold­ed under the pres­sure of the game. We knew we were play­ing under pres­sure the last month. They were the more expe­ri­enced team, they’ve been here before, and we will come back stronger. We know how to deal with these with these obsta­cles now.”