Rapids vs. Toronto FC - Danny Koevermans Out With Cruciate Ligament Injury

It's been a while since there's been good news rippling through Rapidsland, but they got a bit of it on Monday when Toronto FC announced that Danny Koevermans had torn his cruciate ligament in his left knee. That will likely end his season, starting with the game against the Rapids on Wednesday.

Terrible news for Toronto, but there will be a sigh of relief from Colorado's lately porous defense hearing that one of the best scorers in the league -- at least in terms of recent form -- won't be able to terrorize them this time around. Defensive flubs have been the name of the game for the Rapids recently, and the fewer dangerous threats against them the better.

As written by Waking The Red about the loss of their star Dutch striker:

In the meantime, reports have already come out of Holland that include quotes from the 33 year old saying that his season is done. He comments that he does not blame the New England Revolution defender, A.J. Soares, for the challenge but instead notes that having seen the replay of the incident that he knee just twists oddly. He goes on to comment that over his career he has had very good luck with injuries with only minor things involving his hamstring or groin. It gets a lot worse than that though as the Dutch forward confirms that he has a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee and that it caused him terrible pain. The pain was so bad that Koevermans comments he is glad that they were only in Boston and the flight home was not any longer.

Koevermans was the top scorer for the Reds this season and had been on an absolute goal scoring tear in the past few weeks before picking up the injury.

Combine this with the fact that the Rapids will next be facing a Real Salt Lake team minus Kyle Beckerman and suddenly there is a ray of hope -- however tiny said ray might be at the moment -- that the Rapids will actually escape July with a chance to get a win or two. Never fun to do so only because opposing teams are missing their top players but we'll take what we can get, right?

Edit: The story of Koevermans being out for the season because of an ACL tear has been confirmed by several different sources including Grant Wahl. (Bonus points for the artificial turf dig!)