By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (Oct 2, 2013) US Soccer Players – As the MLS season careens towards the playoffs (completely out of control by the look of things), the clear predominance of the Western Conference is coming into focus. From top to bottom, the teams out West look to be intrinsically stronger than their counterparts in the East. Going team by team, the MLS Cup credentials of those teams considered “favorites” gets questionable when the Eastern’s best (the Montreals and New Yorks) enter the conversation.

Of course, playoff time is a different animal than the regular season. Teams that squeak into the postseason sometimes surprise with deep runs. The Houston Dynamo are evidence enough that it’s possible.

It’s important to note that the Dynamo have a not-so-secret weapon, a playoff-adept mind with a wealth of experience and a track record of success leading the charge. Dominic Kinnear stands alone as the one head coach in the Eastern Conference with the proven ability to navigate the playoff maze no matter how difficult the layout. The rest of the conference’s playoff contenders are playoff neophytes or have meager experience. Only one, Peter Vermes, can point to a win in the postseason on his resume. It’s worth noting that Sporting KC advanced and lost to Kinnear and the Dynamo.

Outside of Kinnear, Vermes is the most experienced Eastern Conference playoff coach, if only because the rest of the group have zero history in the MLS postseason.

The Red Bulls have a first year head coach in Mike Petke. Montreal’s Marco Schallibaum coached extensively outside of the North American League, but is in his first MLS season. John Hackworth, should the Union make it, is in his first full campaign as a professional head coach. The Crew’s Brian Bliss, the interim top man in Columbus, is in uncharted waters each time he walks the sidelines having moved from the front office to take over for the fired Robert Warzycha. Jay Heaps leads New England while hoping for the first playoff berth of his young coaching career. The Fire’s Frank Klopas made the postseason last year, which gives him an advantage on those listed above, but crashed out in the Wildcard Round at home to Kinnear and the Dynamo.

Meanwhile, the Western Conference boasts a three-headed monster of coaches with MLS Cup titles to their names. Between them Bruce Arena, Sigi Schmid, and Jason Kreis have seven MLS Cup championships. Arena has four of them himself, and remains the foremost American coaching figure.

They get to pick each other off on the way to an MLS Cup final appearance, provided Oscar Pereja’s Rapids or Caleb Porter’s Timbers don’t spring a surprise and outlast the experience-rich field.

There’s a worthwhile debate over just how much coaching experience in the playoff crucible matters in MLS. For every Dom Kinnear and Bruce Arena, coaches whose histories appear to be to their advantage in the postseason, there’s a Gary Smith (the since-replaced Colorado Rapids head coach who led his team to the 2010 MLS Cup title) or a Jason Kreis circa 2009. The playoff format has changed since the Rapids’ shocking run, but as Bruce Arena and Galaxy have lifted the trophy in both seasons since, the sample size is too small to make any conclusions about coaching experience and its effect on the playoffs.

It’s also impossible to separate the experience of the head coach from the quality of the team. If LA’s back-to-back titles prove anything, it might be that overall talent is now coming to bear in these situations. The Galaxy collected a host of quality players, including DP-level talent, and leveraged it into championships. All of the talk about teams with DPs not winning MLS Cup went by the wayside, and while it’s only LA that has managed the trick, the new reality of MLS is that someone with a DP will probably win this year. The regular season standings have a greater bearing on the ability of a team to run the table than ever before. Since the Western Conference has the better team, the greater experience of coaches in that conference might not be more than coincidental for the eventual champion.

Any belief that playoff coaching experience matters, outside of the comparative talent level of teams matching up against one another, assumes that coaching in the postseason is intrinsically different than in the regular season. Does the do-or-die nature of the playoffs force coaches to make different decisions?

Certainly coaching choices get more scrutiny, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Sigi Schmids, Bruce Arenas, or Dominic Kinnears of the league change their outlook when facing an opponent with the season on the line. Good coaches are good coaches, no matter the stakes. Still, there’s something to making the right adjustment or the right substitution at just the right time under the greater pressure of playoff soccer.

Dominic Kinnear has that knack. So does Bruce Arena.

Nevertheless, succeeding in the playoffs with a wealth of playoff success already on the resume is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. A select few might defy that logic via repeated forays deep into the tournament despite finishing out of the top regular season spots (again, see Kinnear, Dominic), but in general the best coaches have the best teams. When the best teams win, it’s a multifaceted function of all sorts of factors. Good luck trying to unpack and objectively analyze one from another.

Does the Western Conference have the best coaches? In simple terms, it certainly has more of the league’s more experienced and successful names. Luckily for the eventual Eastern Conference champion, the West’s big guns play each other all the way up to MLS Cup final. Whichever neophyte coach emerges from the East won’t have to worry about their inexperience/lack of success until the title decider.

Unless they get the Dynamo, of course.

Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com and the co-host of The Best Soccer Show. Contact him:matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter:http://twitter.com/davisjsn.

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