Thanks for reading through this third Sounders season.

And if you miss the MLS season already, here’s something to be thankful for: The off-season is short. The Sounders are tentatively scheduled to open practice for their fourth season exactly two months from today.

And those two months will be busy.

Dec. 5 and 12 will bring the two-stage re-entry draft for veteran players who options were declined or who are no longer under contract to their existing clubs.

The Sounders’ college combine will be held Dec. 16-18 in Las Vegas.

The new MLS schedule is expected to be released …

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It was reported earlier this week that Sounders broadcaster Alro White was being recruited for a broadcast job with NBC. Tonight, NBC affiliate KING-5 is reporting that has happened.

As of the time of this post, I haven’t seen any confirming release or tweet from Arlo.

However, Arlo and Kasey Keller were among the most recognizable faces and voices of the organization … and James Riley not far behind.

Montreal took James Riley in the expansion draft today, then shipped him to Chivas USA for Gerson Mayen and Justin Braun. Montreal also worked a trade with Seattle, acquiring Tyson Wahl for allocation money.

Riley and Wahl are both defenders and both original Sounders coming in the 2008 expansion draft from San Jose and Kansas City respectively.

“It’s not surprising that James Riley was picked by Montreal,”

Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said in a press release. “He’s been our starting right back for three years and a quality player. We knew it would be a risk to not protect him. He’s a veteran who can step in and help a defense right away.”

Of Wahl, Schmid said: “Tyson has been solid contributor, earning more minutes with each season. We’ll miss his value to our team, but this trade enables him to be a full-time starter and the allocation money will help us maintain the high quality in our team.”

Montreal’s first announced pick was Brian Ching from Houston. The Impact also took former Sanna Nyassi, who was taken from Seattle in last year’s expansion draft.

His is the entire Montreal expansion list.

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The Montreal Impact is expected to reveal its expansion-draft picks list at noon … although MLS often functions on a time zone all its own.

So who will the Sounders lose?

Perhaps no one … or at least no Sounders were included on this expansion “Best XI” list determined by New York Times soccer writer Jack Bell.

On the other hand, in three projections from MLSsoccer.com, two say O’Brian White and one says Patrick Ianni.

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This just in from the club:

The Seattle Seahawks and Sounders FC announced today they will install a new FieldTurf Revolution artificial grass surface at CenturyLink Field in early February 2012.

“The FieldTurf product that was installed in 2008 has performed well especially considering the increase in stadium events, specifically soccer matches and concerts,” said Seahawks, Sounders FC and FGI president Peter McLoughlin. “The new field will offer the field maintenance crew an outstanding and extremely durable product to meet the requirements of each event.”

The two organizations have a long history with FieldTurf. In 2000, when the Seahawks played at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium, they became the first NFL team to play their home games on FieldTurf. The partnership continued at CenturyLink Field and at both teams training facilities.

“Our highest priority is player safety, injury prevention and athletic performance,” Read more »

Here is the Sounders’ list of players protected in the Montreal expansion draft Wednesday:

Osvaldo Alonso, Brad Evans, Alvaro Fernandez, Erik Friberg, Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, Fredy Montero, Lamar Neagle, Sammy Ochoa, Jeff Parke, Mauro Rosales and Steve Zakuani. (Michael Tetteh didn’t need to be protected.)

That means these players are available to the Impact: Terry Boss, Servando Carrasco, David Estrada, Josh Ford, Michael Fucito, Leo Gonzalez, Taylor Graham, Patrick Ianni, Nate Jaqua, Roger Levesque, Bryan Meredith, Miguel Montano, Pat Noonan, James Riley, Amadou Sanyang, Zach Scott, Michael Seamon, Tyson Wahl and O’Brian White.

The club provided this quote from general manager Adrian Hanauer:

Given the fact we’ve lost three players to expansion drafts the past two seasons we are bracing ourselves for the possibility of losing someone. Despite those losses we have developed a deep squad and grown stronger. We couldn’t protect everyone, so some of those who contributed significantly to our success are bound to be exposed. It will be interesting to see how Montreal approaches this.

Here’s the full list from all MLS teams.

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Los Angeles’ 1-0 MLS Cup win over Houston Dynamo last night also was good news for Sounders FC, which now gets to skip the CONCACAF Champions League play-in round and instead will go directly to the group stage.

You’ll remember that Seattle played in to the 2010-11 tournament by winning an aggregate-score series against Metapan, and the 2011-12 tournament by getting past San Francisco of Panama. However, the Sounders get to bypass that for the 2012-13 tournament because of the Galaxy’s MLS Cup/Supporters’ Shield double. According to tournament rules, if one MLS team takes both of of those titles then the next direct entry goes to the team Read more »

The protected/unprotected lists will be revealed today for the expansion draft that will stock the Montreal Impact on Wednesday.

Coach Sigi Schmid was asked about the Sounders’ though process in assembling the list: specifically, how much is just protecting the best 11 players, and how much is trying to anticipate Montreal’s philosophy and then maybe trying to sneak through some unprotected players you’d really like to keep.

His response:

Yeah, it’s a little bit of that. People always think protection is protecting your best players. And sometimes it’s not like that. The first year, the original understanding was that we didn’t have to protect DPs. So we actually had Sebastien (Le Toux) on our protected list. And then we were told we had to protect (Freddie) Ljungberg, so that became more of a positional decision and OK, we end up losing Sebastien.

Last year it was that we had heard an awful lot that Portland Read more »