5 things we learned in MLS Week 18: Red Bulls wave Baah-bye, Whitecaps love Canada

Week 18 of the 2016 MLS season was a relatively straightforward round of action as all 20 teams battled it out on the weekend, with predictable results. The LA Galaxy defeated the slumping Seattle Sounders and the Rocky Mountain duo of Real Salt Lake and the Colorado Rapids stayed level with their respective Canadian counterparts, the Montreal Impact and the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Here's what we learned in Week 18:

The Whitecaps love Canada

Oft-derided, albeit jokingly, for their apparent disregard for Canadian players, the Vancouver Whitecaps took a hefty jab at its Twitter-wielding satirical mob by signing a pair of Canadian internationals this week.

Left full-back Marcel de Jong and central defender David Edgar joined Carl Robinson's side as the Whitecaps began making moves in the summer transfer window. They represent deals that not only provide the club with much-needed depth in defense but also give a pair of important internationals a regular place to train and play at a high level of competition.

And play they likely will, for the Whitecaps have conceded 33 goals thus far this season over 19 matches, good for second-worst in the league. Turns out the Whitecaps do love Canada after all.

Slumping Sounders missing Martins

Quick! Which team is currently dead last in the league?

If you guessed the Seattle Sounders ... you're wrong. It's still the Chicago Fire. But the Sounders are very, very close. Worryingly so. For, with 10 losses in 2016, the slump is very real in Seattle.

Benjamin Baer of MLSsoccer.com surmises that the Sounders' woes start and end in finishing, pointing out that Seattle is creating plenty of chances but scoring on only 6.11 percent of those shots, and the club's win rate has been halved in the absence of now-sold striker Obafemi Martins.

The Sounders will try to bounce back with a Wednesday clash against first-place FC Dallas (... um), a Cascadia rivalry match away at the Portland Timbers on Sunday (yikes!) and then two more weeks of action against Sporting Kansas City (uh oh ...) and the LA Galaxy (oh boy).

Giovinco's drought extends to seven

So here's a fun stat for non-Toronto FC fans (read: Montreal Impact supporters); the club's star man Sebastian Giovinco hasn't scored a goal in his last seven league appearances, stuck now to just eight goals in 17 games for the Reds in 2016.

Since scoring a pair against the Whitecaps in a 4-3 loss in May, Giovinco has recorded two assists but failed to find the back of the net through seven matches. As he grows more frustrated, the Atomic Ant has become a lot more selfish in his shooting, cracking 13 attempts against the Chicago Fire on Saturday.

Giovinco is currently second in total shots (107) behind David Villa (115), and well ahead of third-place Kei Kamara (63), so it's not for a lack of trying. He'll keep doing just that, or the TFC kit man will have a bigger problem on his hands.

Red Bulls' Baah experiment probably over

We hate to say it, but Gideon Baah probably won't be around at the New York Red Bulls next year after suffering yet another extended injury on Sunday when he fractured his tibia against the Portland Timbers.

As such, Baah is expected to miss the next 4-5 months of action.

He already missed a stretch of nine matches this season from April through the middle of May when he suffered a leg injury in a 4-3 win over the Houston Dynamo. Baah is currently on a $278,000 per year deal and with Aurelien Collin now on board, it's hard to come up with good reasons to keep the Ghanaian central defender around next year.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Major League Soccer tends to skew well with the 18-24 crowd, the same generation that grew up with one shared dream: to be the very best, like no one ever was.

It's why MLS stadiums from coast to coast welcomed several new would-be Pokemon masters through its gates this weekend as the augmented reality geocache game Pokemon Go was released in the United States.

While several MLS players got in on the action, too, Seattle's Herculez Gomez is, perhaps, the biggest fan of all: