The Colorado Rapids' late season challenges continued to mount Wednesday night as the team saw wide midfielder Jacob Peterson leave the match in the 12th minute with a knee injury. The side held their own with Pat Noonan coming on for Peterson, dominating possession throughout the first half and ultimately claiming a 1-1 draw against San Jose as Conor Casey hit his second consecutive stoppage-time penalty kick equalizer.
But with the loss of Peterson, the Rapids have now seen three wide midfielders fall to injury in less then six weeks, starting with Colin Clark and followed by Jamie Smith, both out for the season. Smith's midseason acquisition necessitated the release of a fourth wide midfielder in Terry Cooke.
The extent of Peterson's injury is not known yet, but he's unlikely to be available when the team plays again Saturday at Kansas City. He left the field with the support of the training staff, and left Dick's Sporting Goods Park on crutches after the match.
"I don't know anything tonight," Peterson said after the game, indicating the injury seemed to be on the inside of his right knee. "I'll deal with it tomorrow and go from there."
The Rapids are essentially forced to deal with a different kind of attack as they head to Kansas City without a natural wide man who can provide service and creativity in pushing the attack to the goal.
"That's now all of our wide players we've lost, so that's a real disappointment to us," head coach Gary Smith said. "It makes life more difficult of course, because the balance of the group now has changed quite drastically."
It's hard not to think of Smith's group as imbalanced at the moment. They finished the match with Noonan, a natural forward, playing in the midfield along with defender Kosuke Kimura and Pablo Mastroeni, while striker Facundo Diz came on in the final minutes for Nick LaBrocca, who played out of his comfort zone on the right side.
"Pat did a reasonably good job when he went out wide on the left," Smith said. "He's an experienced guy, and his quality on the ball is there to see, but he's a very different guy from Jake, Colin and Jamie. We're putting a lot more pressure on the group to not concede, because the creative edge to the group is slowly but surely starting to wane."
Though Casey and Omar Cummings each had three shots in the game, the Rapids made multiple adjustments on the fly, getting slightly out of synch in the process. Cummings continued to create opportunities with his ball handling, and Casey found himself sinking farther back than he's accustomed to playing to help sustain attacks.
"It affects all different facets of the group," Smith said. "Those opportunities are being reduced. Earlier in the season, [Casey] got maybe four or five opportunities from crosses, now maybe one or two. He looked a little bit flat. There was a cross from Jordan [Harvey, defender], a terrific ball. Early in the season he's dispatching them with great ease."
Casey echoed Smith, calling it a "terrible game" for the Rapids, and noting that the opportunities were there, but the precision in front of the net was not.
"We were just a little sloppy finishing that last pass, or finishing the chance - just a bit off today," Casey said. "Pat put in some great balls, but we were just on the back foot and weren't able to get in there in time. We've had some serious injuries this year, but we've got guys that can fill in and do the job."
With a road match against the Wizards Saturday, the Rapids have little time to adapt to the latest in a seemingly endless late-season spree of absences to injury, suspension, and personal issues. With a day to recuperate Thursday, the side will have only Friday on the training field before leaving for Kansas City.
"It's not going to be easy, I'm not going to make any bones about that," Smith said. "We've lost three important wide players who give us something different. They can outpace someone. They can turn a mediocre attack into something special. And we haven't got those players out wide now. We've got to look to other areas to produce that. Time will tell if we can."
If there was any balance in the midfield, it came with Mastroeni's return from a three-game suspension. In a match when players were challenged to shift their roles on the fly, Mastroeni brought both stability and fire to the midfield.
"I thought he was great on the ball on a night when there were two or three of our midfield players who just fell short," Smith said of Mastroeni. "We needed some invention and creativity and a little bit of sleight of hand somewhere. There's never any question on the effort and endeavor that these guys are putting into the game.
"But Nick being shuffled to the right, I thought he was out of the game a little bit. Mehdi [Ballouchy] found it difficult not only to get on the ball, but to be creative or to make a difference. You throw into that that Kosuke has been a live wire coming from right back, and I thought his service from wide fell short of where it was in previous weeks.
"Pablo really tried to make something happen. Light a fuse somewhere, create a spark. He did his utmost to keep the ball moving quickly and find a little angle or get it into feet a little bit sharper and just drive the lads on. It was great to have him back."
While the side was clearly not at its sharpest, the determination to play 90 minutes without giving in was the difference in taking two stoppage time draws when they could have left both matches empty-handed.
"The players have shown yet again that they'll work it through to the final breath of the game," Smith said. "We've got two points out of six, but we could have had zero, there's no doubt about that. Maybe in other years we might have had zero. Those two points might be very important. We certainly need more, but they could be very important."
Owen Perkins is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
