MONTREAL – Where will Troy Perkins be at the start of the 2015 season?
That appears to be the question on the veteran goalkeeper’s mind heading into an uncertain offseason with the Montreal Impact.
Perkins’ contract is up this winter, and a season of upheaval with the Impact, who finished with the worst record in MLS, has left him questioning whether the club wants to retain him.
“I don’t know, to be honest with you,” Perkins told reporters on Monday when asked if he felt wanted. “It’s one of those things where one day, they say, ‘Yes.’ One day, it’s like, ‘I don’t know.’”
Perkins and his family have settled well in Montreal since arriving from the Portland Timbers following a trade in the summer of 2012.
Of his first 60 league games with the club – starting with his excellent Montreal debut on Aug. 12, 2012 in which he recorded five saves in a 1-0 win over New England – Perkins sat only one. This season, Perkins was between the posts for Montreal’s first 17 fixtures.
But head coach Frank Klopas dropped Perkins after a 2-1 home loss to Kansas City on July 12 where miscommunication between Perkins and defender Heath Pearce gifted Dom Dwyer an 89th-minute winner. Klopas insisted that he had two quality goalkeepers and that it was simply time to put his No. 2, Evan Bush, to the test.
Bush started 13 of Montreal’s last 17 games. While he recognizes that his first outings were uneven, Bush grew more consistent and reliable as the season drew to a close while Perkins nursed a back injury.
Perkins was thus seldom seen at Impact training recently. But his return in front of the media on Monday inevitably brought forth questions on his future.
“I can come out and say a lot of things, but first off, I wouldn’t want to return to a place where I’m not wanted,” Perkins said. “I have to say that personally, from both my family’s point of view and the business point of view, I don’t think I deserved the blame for what happened in the first half of the season, and I think it was put on me.”
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Half an hour earlier, Klopas had reiterated that it had been “the right moment for us to see what we had” in front of goal. Despite praising Perkins’ experience and professionalism, he remained evasive on his future with the team.
“I think it’s a situation where, right now, we have to evaluate and see where we are from a salary-cap standpoint,” Klopas said. “But the most important thing is to discuss with the players to see if they want to be here. … If we can have that continuity with both of them, it’d be very good. But it was good for me to see a guy like Bush get the opportunity to play, do really well and show us that he’s a guy that we can count on.”
And, should the Impact and Perkins find some way to make it work, count on both goalkeepers to maintain their healthy relationship.
“Our families are going trick-or-treating on Friday together, so it’s a good dynamic,” Bush said.
