Learned a long time ago that the MLS season is effin meaningless. Sigi used to have us near the top of the table a lot of the time and when we won the Supporters Shield is was pretty anti climatic. If you can put some run of form together you'll usually make the play offs. The play offs is just about getting hot at the right time.
Some GM's build their teams to dominate the regular season, some are better at 2 legged games in cups.
Where MLS doesn't get much credit for is how daunting the travelling and schedule is, on top of the strict salary cap. European teams b!@ch all the time about having to travel to the like of eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the champions league and how it makes them tired. The Sounders regularly travel 6 hours to the east coast or the south and east coast times vice versa. All that time changes etc takes its toll. Players have to deal with extreme heat in parts of the south and east coast and sometimes extreme cold/snow in the likes of Toronto at this time of year. It's something I feel is taken for granted when factoring in the difficulty of the league.