NWSL, Week 17 in review: Stayin’ alive

A season ago, the two teams that finished at the bottom of the table were Washington and Seattle. The last-place Spirit managed just 14 points in all of 2013, going 3-14-5 through the 22-game season. The Spirit’s 16 goals scored, 39 against and minus-23 goal differential were all also league worsts. The 2013 Reign did only moderately better, finishing second from the bottom with 18 points and a 5-14-3 record. Seattle scored 22 times and allowed 36 goals, good for a league second-worst minus-14 goal differential.

Fast forward to now and the Reign are top of the table -- for good. Thanks to a 4-1 win on Wednesday in Houston, Seattle will finish the regular season at the top, where it’s been all year. The Reign clinched the NWSL Shield as the regular season champions with that win and are also guaranteed a home playoff game, heading into the postseason as the league’s top team.

And Seattle will be, almost certainly now, joined in the playoffs by former basement roommates Washington, who knocked off Chicago in style on Saturday to give themselves some breathing room in the standings. The Spirit haven’t officially secured a playoff berth, but with two games remaining last year’s worst team is comfortably in the top four, separated from the fifth-place Red Stars by six points. The postseason isn’t a sure thing for Washington, not yet, but heading into the final two games of the season with a chance -- a good chance -- at it being a sure thing? That’s a pretty big improvement from a season ago.

Speaking of a season ago, 2013 Shield winners and Championship losers Western NY stayed alive, mathematically anyway -- and only thanks to tiebreakers, with a win in Boston. Expansion side Houston, with a loss to the Thorns, joins Boston at the big playoff watch party in the sky.

Yael Averbuch and the biggest goal of Washington’s life
When the 2014 schedule was released those many months ago, Washington-Chicago in early August was hardly one you’d be pulling out your big red marker to circle. Last year’s last-place finisher meets perennial underachiever? Um, I think I have to wash my hair. And there’s that thing, at the thing, with the-- I have to go. But the NWSL’s second season is -- and has been since it kicked off -- full of surprises, and so that Washington-Chicago game in early August became one of the biggest games, full of the biggest implications, in the league’s young history. Third-place Spirit meet fifth-place Chicago, winner stays -- or moves into -- the top four, playoff hopes very much alive and well as the season hits the homestretch. The loser, not eliminated, but left with a tough road and needing some help from other teams along the way to make it out. A draw would help fourth-place Portland more than it would either the Spirit or Red Stars. And that’s where this one was set to go.

Lori Chalupny scored for Chicago in the fourth minute, Christine Nairn equalized for Washington in the 48th and that draw that would help neither team was all but officially in the books. Enter two of the biggest plays in the Spirit’s history. In the 89th minute -- scored tied at 1-1 -- Ashlyn Harris makes a point-blank save on a Christen Press header to keep things even. And then there is the goal -- the one that, if or when Washington makes the playoffs, will be marked as the moment why.

It is stoppage time, and it is late in those four minutes. Diana Matheson plays the ball from the corner, sprinting and sliding to keep it in play, to Lisa De Vanna in the box. De Vanna holds, for a period of time that is forever, dancing around the ball, looking. She finds Yael Averbuch at the top of the box. De Vanna, the player who’s on her third team in two seasons and second this year, a should-be marquee striker who’s instead made just 15 appearances and scored a single goal this season, and Averbuch, so long in-and-out of the national team picture and too mired in an underachieving season, here coming off the bench in the 68th minute. Averbuch is beyond the top of the box, above the arc at the top of the 18. It is far. She receives the ball, doesn’t take a touch, just uncorks a shot, left-footed. Karina LeBlanc doesn’t have a chance as it sails into the back of the net. It is the 94th minute -- of the game, of the season.

Washington will play twice more, and the Spirit still have work to do in those two games, for sure, but barring some collapse, they will be in the postseason a year after finishing dead last. It will be, in some part, because of that save and this goal. And Chicago’s road, now that much harder as the Red Stars sit still on the outside of the postseason picture looking in with three games left to play, is too because of those.

Kansas City clinches a playoff spot
Of the four teams in the playoffs a season ago -- Western NY, FC Kansas City, Portland and Sky Blue FC -- just two were even in the top four coming into this week. The Flash are on the brink of elimination, Sky Blue not yet mathematically out but mired in a three-team race for the bottom more than a push for the postseason. Portland is holding on to fourth, but not by a lot. Of those four, only Kansas City looked a sure thing for the playoffs heading into the weekend, but the Blues had already failed to clinch a playoff spot in a midweek loss to the Spirit.

Amy Rodriguez, who didn’t play a season ago after giving birth to her first child, netted her 12th goal of the season in the sixth minute and Kansas City held the lead over a sleepy-looking Seattle well into the second half. But Seattle has made a name for itself, and led the league all season, in part by running over opponents with flash and style and in part with comebacks in games the Reign looked mostly uninterested in playing. This was the latter, with Megan Rapinoe scoring her fourth goal of an injury-shortened season -- this was just her sixth appearance of the year -- in the 68th minute to level the score.

While a win would have secured a home playoff game for the Blues, FCKC still gets into the postseason with the draw, joining the Reign as the only two teams officially in the playoffs.

Western NY stays alive, barely
Western NY did what it had to do on Sunday to stay alive, knocking off the Breakers 4-3 in Boston, but like the Flash’s playoff hopes, it was only barely. Western NY had a 3-1 lead, thanks to an Abby Wambach brace and goal from Sam Kerr, into the 74th minute, before allowing the Breakers to equalize. Jazmine Reeves and Kristie Mewis scored just two minutes apart to level the score at 3-3. The Flash got the win only thanks to a stoppage-time score from Sonia Bermudez, avoiding elimination -- at least for now. The Flash are stuck in sixth on the table, and with two games left to play, on the brink of elimination thanks to Portland’s win Sunday night. Western NY is still in only mathematically and by less than a point, alive only because the Flash hold the tiebreaker over the Thorns.

Houston gets eliminated in front of a record crowd and on national television
The NWSL’s first-ever expansion club put up a valiant effort against a Portland side fighting for its playoff life, but ultimately the Dash fell short, losing 1-0 to the Thorns in Portland. Vero Boquete scored in the 54th minute, the only goal in a game where neither side had many quality chances. Portland put a five-point gap between itself and fifth-place Chicago with the win, and is now just a point back on the third-place Spirit. Both Portland and Washington have only two games remaining, while Chicago has three. Houston, meanwhile, is officially eliminated from playoff contention with the loss.

And because it’s absolutely worth mentioning, attendance at Providence Park on Sunday night: 19,123. That’s an NWSL record.

Wednesday
Washington Spirit 2 - 1 FC Kansas City
Houston Dash 1 - 4 Seattle Reign FC

Thursday
Sky Blue FC 1 - 0 Western NY Flash

Saturday
Washington Spirit 2 - 1 Chicago Red Stars
FC Kansas City 1 - 1 Seattle Reign FC

Sunday
Boston Breakers 3 - 4 Western NY Flash
Portland Thorns FC 1 - 0 Houston Dash