MONTREAL

Major League Soccer’s schedule is a hot mess.

The regular season is too long. The post-season is too long. The off-season isn’t close to long enough for playoff teams.

Consider this: The two teams that compete in the MLS Cup are rewarded with a six-week off-season — enough time to rest, recover, take a quick vacation and rediscover fitness before reporting for pre-season in mid-to-late January.

There are challenges, of course. MLS faces the unique scheduling puzzle of squeezing in domestic and international Cup games amid a year riddled with FIFA international dates. And that’s before mentioning North America’s unique weather patterns.

Still, it’s ridiculous to stretch the final three playoff rounds over 45 days. Soccer isn’t best played in December.

“There’s a lot of discussion around (the schedule),” TFC goalkeeper Clint Irwin said. “But you look at it and you look at the international games and I don’t know if there’s a better way to do it.

“It’s tough because you have the World Cup qualifiers. If you play games during the qualifiers then you’re going to be missing the best players on each team.”

MLS needs to find a way wrap the playoffs before November’s international window. That could mean decreasing the number of games.

With 22 teams — Atlanta and Minnesota begin play next season — the league could move to a 31-game schedule that sees in-conference foes face off twice while playing out-of-conference teams once.

Anything to correct a season that sees MLS take a two-week break in the middle of the playoffs before potentially staging MLS Cup in near-arctic conditions.

“I don’t know if there’s a good solution for it,” Irwin added. “It’s not ideal. I’m sure people in the league office know that it’s not ideal because you miss some momentum from the last leg of the playoffs.”

Perhaps “hot mess” isn’t the right phrasing given the snow squall that hit Quebec as Toronto FC arrived here Monday.