May began with the Avalanche and Nuggets getting bounced from the playoffs, and Rockies falling to fourth in the NL West.

Denver sports teams weren’t trending in the right direction for the Rapids as they went into their May 20 clash with the LA Galaxy. Anything less than a victory, and the burgundy would set an MLS record for the longest winless streak to begin a season.

They surprised us all with a major upset on the road. The victory doesn’t quite assuage the pain of Denver’s teams getting bounced from the NHL and NBA playoffs. But it is a step in the right direction.

A terrible streak for the Rapids is over. But can we take any larger lessons from what took place last Sunday in Carson, Calif.?

Positive Trends

The Colorado Rapids under Anthony Hudson proclaimed that they would play smart, attacking soccer, based primarily on short and medium passing, possession and domination of the central midfield, and creating wide attacks using the team’s fullbacks. As evidenced by the club’s winless record before Sunday, it didn’t work.

Interim head coach Conor Casey has dumped the 4-4-2 diamond and the high-attacking fullbacks, which proved to be exceedingly vulnerable, in favor of a more cautious 4-2-3-1. Against Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent in the Rapids’ defeat the week before to Salt Lake, all four defenders stayed back on defense, and Colorado kept at least one and sometimes two midfielders back as well. The centerbacks had to deal with fewer panic situations, the opposition’s attackers had less space to work in and Colorado’s defense could collapse on them quicker. Every defender could play with more ease knowing that they were responsible for a smaller patch of grass. It made everybody play better.

Another positive development for the Rapids is the sudden emergence of two wingers where once the team had none — Sam Nicholson and Jonathan Lewis. Under Hudson, the Rapids got their width from their fullbacks. As a result, over the past two transfer windows, the Rapids had built a team to the coach’s specifications. Both wide midfielders and defensive midfielders were unnecessary in Hudson’s system, so the front office purged players known for their play from wide spots such as Marlon Hairston, Joshua Gatt, Enzo Martinez and Stefan Aigner. They also dispensed with pure defending midfielders such as Micheal Azira and Jared Watts.

When Colorado jettisoned Hudson, it effectively jettisoned his plans, too. But with a team built to Hudson’s specifications, the options for how to change up the system with the guys on hand were limited.

Casey and general manager Padraig Smith employed the time-tested adage “necessity is the mother of invention.” Nicholson, a second striker who generally played centrally and between the midfield and the center forward, was redeployed as a right midfielder. Smith saw underused winger Jonathan Lewis sitting on the bench for NYCFC and made a big offer — $650,000 in Targeted Allocation Money plus an international slot in 2020 — to make him the team’s left midfielder.

Anthony Hudson had no use for wide midfielders. But Casey not only indicated that he needs them, but he also found almost immediate success with them, as Lewis and Nicholson were both excellent this past week. They also created instant chemistry in their new roles with Rapids striker Kei Kamara, who played some nice combinations to both wingers, including this perfectly timed one-two.

Remarkable chemistry and intuition on display between @keikamara (#23) and Jonathan Lewis (#11) last week in LA. This, in the 19th minute.

…

A good sign going forward. #Rapids96 pic.twitter.com/2LvQteZlm2 — Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi) May 23, 2019

Lastly, the aforementioned tactical change of letting defenders defend, plus the addition of centerback Lalas Abubakar, and letting central midfielders Kellyn Acosta and Jack Price sit deeper, seems to have stabilized the team. Before Sunday, Colorado had conceded 2.72 goals per game and was on pace to let in 90 goals allowed on the year, which would be the worst goals-conceded record in league history — by 16. Colorado flipped the script completely, earning their first shutout of the season, on the road, to one of the league’s more impressive offenses.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here, folks

One win is exciting, but until the team can repeat that success, it’s hard to get too excited. There are still a lot of things that are concerning. For one, the Galaxy were missing their best player, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but seemed intent on playing like he was still there in spirit. LA bent in 36 crosses from wide areas, looking for the big meaty forehead of their 6-foot-5 Swedish superstar. In his place were three strikers — Emmanuel Boateng, Uriel Acuna, and Efrain Alvarez — each of whom fails to break a height of 5-8. Launching balls at their heads was probably, for lack of a better term, really dumb.

The Galaxy also had long stretches as the better team and had a plethora of first-half opportunities that they failed to capitalize upon. The Galaxy had 18 shots in the game, including 4 shots on target in just the first 12 minutes, that fortunately were turned away by the big mitts of Tim Howard. Of the Galaxy’s 18 shots, nine of them came from inside the 18-yard box and in spots where advanced metrics like ‘expected goals’ strongly indicates that, on average, those goals will go in more often than not. I think it’s likely that Zlatan would have Zlataned the everloving snot out of the Rapids had he gotten that many early opportunities. The Rapids are going to need to limit the number and quality of shots by opposing teams if they want last Sunday’s shutout to be a trend and not a fluke.

Colorado’s next match is at home against Columbus, a team that has a solid defense but also comes to Commerce City with one win and seven losses in their last eight tries. Now is the time to find out if the team’s upswing in fortunes can go from a blip to a trend.