Can the Whitecaps keep the CPL from the Cup?
Talking about some probabilities based on some largely meaningless stats
For the first time since the Covid altered 2020 Canadian Championship, a CPL team is guaranteed to get into the final of the Canadian Championship. Montreal knocked out TFC and Forge knocked out Montreal, so it’s the Whitecaps versus the maddening horde.
Today, I’m going to take a look back at the last 6 instances of the CanChamp and talk about how the much watched MLS vs CPL match ups have played out and do some math at it. Now, up front I’ll note that soccer is played on the field between the teams that show up on the day and this probabilistic view is smashing together performances from a number of teams across a number of years and if we embrace the idea that a team changes season over season and week to week, all of this tells us effectively nothing useful… but I already built the spreadsheet so ya know at least you can check this for how many times has a CPL team beaten an MLS team.
Methodology
Some general stuff for the overall table I’m about to throw at you:
I’m not counting games vs League 1 Canada teams. It just crowds some of the stats I’m more interested in.
I’m considering Ottawa Fury’s 2019 entry to be a predecessor of Attletico Ottawa’s. That’s not right in any kind of real way, but that team is of vaguely CPL level and would otherwise be a weird aberration (beating a CPL team, losing to an MLS team)
The Important one: In the case of two-legged ties I am counting them as a single event that is one or lost. I don’t care if you can do it over 90, if you failed over 180. I don’t care if you lost on away goals, you know the rules and so do I. The game state in a two legged tie is based on the impact on the end result of the tie, not on the game state of the current leg. At the end of a loss in the first leg, there isn’t the same urgency there would be if that game were the 2nd leg.
On to the table:
If you haven’t been counting CPL teams have beaten MLS teams 4 times! Cavalry knocked out the Whitecaps in 2019, Pacific accomplished the same in 2021 and Forge have knocked out Montreal in both 2024 and 2025.
What are the chances?
The bad news for the CPL is they’ve lost 20 inter-league match ups. The result is that in theoretical match between a generic *Canadian* MLS team and a generic CPL team has an 83% chance of ending in an MLS victory. Treating two games in a row as independent events that would give an MLS team just under a 70% chance of winning twice in a row. If you’re CPL inclined, you can flip those probabilities for a 17% chance of winning any given game and a 30% chance of winning at least one game.
If you haven’t fully embraced the light and truth of “A team never plays the same twice” you may also want the Whitecaps vs. CPL stats separate, noting that they have lost twice. But, alas, they’ve also beaten a lot of CPL teams so the odds only drop to 80% for a single game and 64% for both, which isn’t a very interesting change.
Anyway there’s other fun stats to pull out of this, but quite frankly these probabilities don’t mean anything so let’s not bother any further with this.