The Lions entered Saturday's matchup against Vancouver missing a lot of bodies, including half the starting back line. Then things got worse when starting center back and team captain Robin Jansson suffered a nasty-looking injury early in the game.

Despite all that, the Lions took the lead through Dagur Dan Thorhallsson's well-taken goal. Although the Whitecaps dominated possession and smothered Orlando whenever the Lions had the ball, the lads in purple were just minutes away from a gigantic three points. But Kyle Smith smashed a clearance off a Whitecap and into his own net to tie the game late, and Vancouver's big signing scored in the seventh of five added minutes to take all the points from Orlando. After seeing the good side of the Cardiac Cats in recent weeks, the game was a reminder that the bad Cardiac Cats are also out there lurking.

We tried not to dwell too much on a gut punch of a game in our recap, checked our score predictions, and made our selections for Man of the Match.

This week's mailbagbox asked us about Saturday's center back pairing and pizza toppings — in completely separate questions. Remember, if there’s anything — and we do mean anything — you want us to address on the show, just ask us by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC, or hitting us up on Bluesky Social with that same hashtag.

Finally, Orlando City will have to try once more to score more than one goal in a game as the Lions visit BMO Field in Toronto Saturday for a Decision Day match against the Reds of Toronto FC. We look back at the series history, discuss the relative performances of the two clubs, provide our key matchups, and make our predictions for the final score on Saturday.

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Here’s how No. 508 went down:

0:15 – Orlando City was nine minutes plus stoppage from an improbable but much-needed win. Then a dumb thing happened. And then a bad thing happened.

22:57 – The mailbagbox is succinct this week but still quite fun.

30:53 - The Lions travel north of the border for a Decision Day match against Toronto FC. Orlando needs three points to safely avoid the wild card game, but the Reds have been drawing almost everyone lately.

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