It’s not the schedule, but the next best thing. Yesterday afternoon the USL announced the 2017 conference alignment as well as some general schedule dates. The Western Conference will be… whatever! We won’t see any of those teams until the finals. Your 2017 Eastern Conference tributes are-
Bethlehem Steel FC
Charleston Battery
Charlotte Independence
FC Cincinnati
Harrisburg City Islanders
Louisville City FC
New York Red Bulls II
Orlando City B
Ottawa Fury FC
Pittsburgh Riverhounds
Richmond Kickers
Rochester Rhinos
Saint Louis FC
Tampa Bay Rowdies
Toronto FC II
This year the Eastern Conference picked up three “new” teams with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the Ottawa Fury, and the return of Saint Louis FC. If you are unaware Tampa and Ottawa come from the NASL and are not completely new teams. You may recall Tampa from the dramatic last minute goal by Rob Vincent in the 2015 US Open Cup. We’re hoping for more of that. Saint Louis was swept away in a flood to the Western Conference in 2016, but found their way back to East. They’ll probably be here for at least a year until the fabled Central Conference forms, at which point the league will continue playing hot potato and put them in the Caribbean Conference.
Of note the Montreal Impact joined the rest of us in not caring about FC Montreal and decided to pull the plug on the team. They instead picked up Ottawa as their affiliate. Goodbye perennial wooden spoon winner Montreal! You won’t see any tears here except for what could have been an amazing Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal road trip.
Besides who we’re playing we also have some information about how often we’ll play them. It will be a 32 game season over the course of 30 weeks; up two games from 2016. We’ll play each team in the conference twice (home and away), plus 4 other games against “regional rivals”. The caveat being you can’t play a team more than three times during the regular season. I fully expect the extra games to be against Harrisburg, Bethlehem, Rochester, and Cincinnati. Playoff format will be the same as last year.
Finally, some dates to be aware of-
Opening Weekend: March 24th-26th
Closing Weekend: October 13th – 15th
Conference Quarterfinals: October 20th -22nd
Conference Semifinals: October 27th – 29th
Conference Finals: November 3rd – 5th
2017 USL Cup Final: The weekend of November 10th – 12th
Next up the schedule! Please be soon…
#UNLEASH
