approach and one of the other two contenders figures to beat itself

Two regulars in the Major League Soccer playoffs, the Seattle Sounders and Sporting Kansas City, square off Thursday in a playoff-opening, knockout-round match at CenturyLink Field.Sporting KC is in its sixth consecutive postseason, while Seattle has reached the postseason in all eight years of its existence.For the third straight year, Sporting Kansas City (13-13-8) opens its postseason campaign away from home. SKC enters on the heels of consecutive shutouts, drawing against Real Salt Lake 0-0 on Oct. 16 before defeating the San Jose Earthquakes 2-0 on Sunday.Seattle (14-14-6) got hot late. Following a 3-0 loss to Sporting on July 24, the Sounders were in ninth place in a 10-team Western Conference. Two days later, the team fired longtime coach Sigi Schmid.Under interim coach Brian Schmetzer, Seattle finished the season 8-2-4 to claim the fourth-place spot and a home match in the knockout round. The turnaround was even more surprising considering star goal-scorer Clint Dempsey has been out since late August due to an irregular heartbeat. He will not return to action in the postseason.Sporting relies on two key offensive players. Forward Dom Dwyer finished fifth in MLS with 16 goals. Midfielder Benny Feilhaber tied for third in the league with 13 assists, including nine in his last 11 appearances.Midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro has played an integral role in Seattles resurgence, amassing four goals and eight assists since his debut on July 31. Forward Jordan Morris set an MLS record among American rookies with 12 goals.Dating back to 2015, Sporting Kansas City owns a five-game unbeaten run against Seattle with four clean sheets. Goalkeeper Tim Melia is 3-0-1 vs. the Sounders with zero goals conceded. Prior to the five-game surge, Kansas City had just one win in its first nine league meetings with the Sounders.Statistics suggest that Sporting Kansas City is fighting an uphill battle Thursday night. In 14 knockout-round games since 2011, the road team has prevailed just twice. Furthermore, SKC is just 2-15-5 all-time in road playoff matches, including a last-minute loss to the New York Red Bulls in 2014 and the longest penalty kick shootout in MLS postseason history one year ago, a stunning setback to the Portland Timbers.The Sounders have experienced their fair share of playoff difficulty, as well. Despite reaching the playoffs every year since 2009, Seattle has yet to reach an MLS Cup final. The Sounders are 2-0 in the knockout round but have fallen in the conference semifinals five times, including last seasons exit versus FC Dallas.The SKC-Seattle winner will face the leagues top regular-season team, FC Dallas, in the Western Conference semifinals. The first leg of the home-and-home affair will be played Sunday in Kansas City or Seattle, with the return leg scheduled for Nov. 6 in Frisco, Texas. Adidas Prophere Suomi . Badenhop was 2-3 with a 3.47 ERA in 63 relief appearances for Milwaukee this season. He is 18-20 in his career with three saves and a 3. Adidas Gazelle Kengät . -- An ugly goal by Nick Bonino helped the Anaheim Ducks overcome the defensive-minded Phoenix Coyotes on a night when their ragged power play continued to struggle. http://www.nmdhalvalla.com/adidas-nmd-r2-halvalla.html . Wilson hit Schenn from behind during Tuesday nights game in Philadelphia, earning a five-minute major for charging and a game misconduct. He has a phone hearing with the department of player safety, which limits any potential suspension to five or fewer games. Adidas NMD Suomi . The Dutchmans tenure got off to a poor start when referee Guido Winkmann awarded a penalty within two minutes for Niklas Starks clumsy challenge on Alexandru Maxim. Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 Suomi . He was followed closely by David Clarkson, donning red, seconds later. Clarksons actions one night earlier, leaping off the bench in defence of Kessel during a pre-season game against the Buffalo Sabres, will cost him the first 10 games of the regular season. Five of ESPN.coms MLB beat writers who cover teams battling for wild-card berths were asked to make a case for why their team will be playing a do-or-die playoff game in October. Below, Mark Saxon argues for the St. Louis Cardinals against fellow writers Eddie Matz (Baltimore Orioles), Andrew Marchand (New York Yankees), Katie Strang (Detroit Tigers) and Adam Rubin (New York Mets).For more on the other contenders, check out?Wild-card Wednesday.Saxon: If you believe the moral of the old fable The Tortoise and the Hare, then you buy that the Cardinals will reach the NL wild-card game. While the other two contenders, the Mets and Giants, have had wild swings of fortune, the Cardinals have just kept plodding along. Their longest losing streak is five games. Their longest winning streak is five games. They came one right after the other in mid-June. So all they have to do is continue their steady-as-it-goes approach and one of the other two contenders figures to beat itself. The other thing they have going for them: Starting Thursday, the best road team in baseball has 10 of its final 17 games away from Busch Stadium. If they get into the postseason, who knows? Maybe theyll finally get hot.Marchand: This does not feel like a classic Cardinals team. They have been great on the road, but that could be reaching its expiration point.Matz: As my mother will tell you, Im a good boy who follows directions, and my marching orders here were to shoot a hole in every one of these theories (except mine, of course). To do that, Im calling on my eexperience with logic puzzles back in Mrs.dddddddddddd Harris fifth-grade math class. If the Mets and Cardinals arent wild cards (which, per my instructions, they cant be), then the wild cards must be the second-place NL West team (Giants or Dodgers) and the ... Marlins?Strang: The Cards had dropped four of their past six games heading into Tuesdays action, including Mondays loss, in which they mustered just one hit off Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks (who, granted, has been lights-out against pretty much everyone in recent months) and saw Matt Carpenter exit the game with back tightness. More concerning is that St. Louis still has another set against the Cubs before closing out the season with a seven-game homestand. That stretch at home should be a good thing, especially considering their caliber of competition -- except for the fact, as Saxon astutely pointed out, that the Cards have been awful at Busch Stadium this year.Rubin: We already covered the disparity in schedule strength the remainder of the season to justify why the Mets will reach the postseason over St. Louis. Now lets zero in on the Cardinals swoon, which is being fueled by inconsistent starting pitching, erratic defense and a glaring lack of setup men. Jaime Garcia produced an 8.06 ERA in a five-start stretch through last Thursday. Meanwhile, Aledmys Diaz has only a .957 fielding percentage, with 16 errors through 93 games at shortstop. ' ' '