With Major League Soccer recently announcing new playoff tie-breaker rules, the Montreal Impact no longer just need to win games, they need to score goals. A lot of them.

The league announced last Wednesday that its Board of Governors approved the new format, which sets total goals scored as the first playoff tiebreaker when teams finish the season with equal points.

The somewhat baffling decision to alter the league’s rules in the middle of the campaign changes the plot, slightly, for a Montreal squad that has valiantly kept its playoff aspirations alive in recent weeks.

It’s been a tight race all year long in the Eastern Conference, where the top five teams earn a playoff berth. Sporting Kansas City and the New York Red Bulls have proven themselves the class of the East, and the Houston Dynamo has joined them near the top of the table after an impressive run of form. The Chicago Fire, D.C. United and Montreal are the sides with a realistic chance at the final playoff positions.

Montreal and D.C. are tied on 36 goals, though D.C. has three games in hand and has more three points. And in a strange scheduling quirk, the Impact have played six more matches than the Columbus Crew, the team chasing them in the standings. Still, with the Crew sitting on a paltry 20 goals scored through 20 matches, the tiebreaker news could not have been well-received in Columbus in light of the current standings.

CLUB	PTS	GP	W	L	T	GF
Kansas City	43	24	13	7	4	30
New York	41	24	12	7	5	40
Houston	40	24	11	6	7	35
Chicago	38	23	11	7	5	28
DC	36	22	11	8	3	36
Montreal	33	26	10	13	3	36
Columbus	28	20	8	8	4	20

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Midfield magic, forward thinking

The Impact have been blessed by the surprisingly prolific output of their midfield, including six goals from Patrice Bernier (four from penalties), and four each from Davy Arnaud and Felipe Martins. Montreal spreads the offence around, but that’s masked the fact that they haven’t had great production from their front-men.

Montreal coach Jesse Marsch has used lots of different combinations up front, with varying results. Let’s take a look at the four players who have spent the most time up front for the club in 2012.

PLAYER	GOALS PER 90 MIN	SHOTS	SHOTS ON GOAL	GOALS	GOALS PER SOG	GOALS PER SHOTS
Andrew Wenger	0.72	10	6	4	67%	40%
Bernardo Corradi	0.58	13	7	4	57%	31%
Sanna Nyassi	0.33	48	25	5	20%	10%
Marco Di Vaio	0.13	25	4	1	25%	4%

Andrew Wenger

Montreal was criticized in some quarters for selecting Wenger over Darren Mattocks with the first overall selection in the MLS SuperDraft back in January. While Mattocks is off to a blazing start in his MLS career with Vancouver, becoming a first-choice player for coach Martin Rennie, Wenger’s shown that he has all the tools to be a star as well.

PLAYER	GP	GAMES STARTED	GOALS	MINS	A	SHOTS	SOG	GOALS PER 90 MIN
Darren Mattocks	14	11	7	937	1	32	14	0.672
Andrew Wenger	15	4	4	500	0	10	6	0.720

Wenger has battled injuries and has often been used as a substitute in his first pro season, still managing four goals in 500 minutes of league action. Over 2700 minutes (30 starts), that projects to 21 goals. Wenger is the future of this team up front, and if he can stay healthy, he will strike fear into MLS defences for years to come — or until he goes overseas.

Bernardo Corradi

From the future (Wenger) to the past (Corradi). Brought aboard in the season’s early days, Corradi was a stopgap veteran who seemed to be adapting fairly well to life in MLS before a season-ending knee injury.

Note, though, that Corradi’s total of four league goals is somewhat inflated by his three successful penalty kicks. At 36, his future with the team looks doubtful, particularly with fellow Italians Marco Di Vaio and Alessandro Nesta occupying roster spots, and significant salary cap hits for Montreal.

Sanna Nyassi

Nyassi is versatile, but his best spot on the field is as a winger or attacking midfielder, not as an out-and-out striker. The 23-year-old Gambian is a truly confounding player. One moment he’ll make an easy play look difficult, and the next moment, he’ll pull off an awe-inspiring run and strike as he did in New England on Sunday.

For Impact fans, it seems like several moments of frustration broken up only by the odd moment of brilliance. Still, his five league goals are good for second place on the team, and though he’s never proven to be a clinical finisher in MLS, he remains a good depth option for Marsch.

Marco Di Vaio

With Italian match-fixing allegations still hanging over his head, and just one league goal from eight starts, Di Vaio’s time with Montreal has not started well. He clearly possesses a level of class in his game that few others in the league share, but has struggled to adapt to the Impact’s playing style and integrate with his new teammates on the pitch.

Di Vaio was acquitted from the scandal, dating back to his time in the Italian league, but new evidence has emerged and things continue to drag on.

If Di Vaio’s healthy –physically, but more so mentally — he has every chance to be a prolific goal scorer in MLS. If he can’t get to that point down the stretch run, it will be yet another roadblock for a team that has admirably handled everything thrown at them over the course of this season.

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Jon Spratt is a freelance journalist and feature writer based in Toronto. Follow Jon on Twitter.

Wednesday marks a big day in the history of the Montreal Impact.

Major League Soccer’s newest franchise will round out its roster by selecting 10 players from other clubs in the league’s expansion draft.

Montreal currently has only four players under contract for next season — goalkeeper Evan Bush, defenders Hassoun Camara and Nelson Rivas and midfielder Sinisa Ubiparipovic — so Wednesday’s draft gives Montreal the opportunity to build by selecting players left unprotected by their clubs.

Here’s what you need to know about the expansion draft:

Draft rules

The Montreal Impact will choose a total of 10 players left unprotected by the 18 other teams in MLS. Clubs can only lose one player in the draft.

Each MLS club has protected 11 players from their 2011 roster. Generation adidas players and home-grown players are automatically protected and do not count against a team’s 11 protected roster spots.

Designated Players do not have to be protected unless the player has a no trade clause in his contract.

Toronto FC unprotected list

Danleigh Borman, Elbekay Bouchiba, Adrian Cann, Kyle Davies, Julian de Guzman, Matt Gold, Leandre Griffit, Peri Marosevic, Javier Martina, Demitrius Omphroy, Nick Soolsma, Nathan Sturgis, Eddy Viator, Dicoy Williams, Mikael Yourasskowsky, Gianluca Zavarise

Vancouver Whitecaps unprotected list

Michael Boxall, Jeb Brovsky, Joe Cannon, Bilal Duckett, Greg Janicki, Mustapha Jarju, Jonathan Leathers, Alexandre Morfaw, Jay Nolly, John Thorrington, Pete Vagenas

Other notable players left unprotected

American forward Freddy Adu (Philadelphia Union), Canadian defenders Nana Attakora (San Jose Earthquakes) and Ante Jazic (Chivas USA), forward Jeff Cunningham (Columbus Crew), forward Carlos Costly (Houston Dynamo), forward Nate Jaqua (Seattle Sounders), forward Omar Bravo (Sporting Kansas City)

The deal with Portland

According to The Oregonian, a Portland-based newspaper, the Portland Timbers have a deal with Montreal whereby the Impact have agreed not to select any of its players in the draft.

The agreement is part of the deal that saw Timbers forward Ryan Pore join Montreal as part of a loan deal this past summer. The Timbers also sent an international roster slot to the Impact in the deal.

Who will the Impact pick?

That’s the $1-million question.

“We are looking to get a good mix of veteran and young players,” Matt Jordan, the Impact’s director of soccer operations, told the team’s official website.

“There are a lot of things we have to take into consideration when making a selection, including making sure that player fits in our budget.”

With that in mind, it seems highly unlikely Montreal will pick Toronto midfielder Julian de Guzman or Vancouver forward Mustapha Jarju.

De Guzman and Jarju are designated players, but you shouldn’t read too much into them being left unprotected. Both have cost-prohibitive contracts (Jarju earned $426,883 last season, while de Guzman made $1,910,746) which means TFC and the Whitecaps feel pretty confident the Impact will be scared off by their price tags.

Indeed, TFC left de Guzman unprotected last year and the Whitecaps didn’t select him in the expansion draft.

Look for Montreal to go after a forward who can score goals, such as Omar Bravo or Carlos Costly. Bravo has a relatively inexpensive contract (he made $170,000 last season) and is the type of creative player who could add a lot of spark to Montreal’s attack.

If the Impact are looking to add depth at the back, they could do a lot worse than select Canadian defenders Nana Attakora and Adrian Cann. Both have experience in this league and would be valuable additions to Montreal’s back line.

Picking Attakora or Cann would, however, be gambles.

Cann missed most of the 2011 season with a knee injury and is currently in the middle of his rehabilitation. Attakora is coming off a pretty disappointing campaign that saw him traded to San Jose from TFC. He’s also out of contract, which means Montreal would have to negotiate a new deal with him.

If Montreal is set to go after another goalkeeper, look for them to scoop up Joe Cannon. The veteran shot-stopper was one of the few bright spots for the Whitecaps this past year, and he has vast experience in the league as a two-time MLS goalkeeper of the year.

Other notable players the Impact should consider include: goalkeeper Jon Conway (Chicago Fire), midfielder Michael Lahoud (Chivas USA), defender Kosuke Kimura (Colorado Raids), winger Emmanuel Ekpo (Columbus Crew), midfielder Michael Stephens (LA Galaxy), midfielder Mehdi Ballouchy (New York Red Bulls), defender Robbie Russell (Real Salt Lake) and midfielder Mike Fucito (Seattle Sounders).