It looked so familiar.
The moment Stefan Frei made a jaw-dropping save against the Vancouver Whitecaps on Wednesday evening, every Sounders supporter indubitably drew a comparison to Frei's epic, match-saving dive in the 2016 MLS Cup. On that cold night in Toronto, the Swiss netminder leaped to his left, extended his fingertips and pushed the ball off frame. He did it again on Wednesday. Rinse and repeat.
“I think it turns into instinct after you’ve done it a million times," Frei said following the match. "You’ve seen that ball before, you gauge the work and then you intercept it. I think I’ve grown fond of using my left hand on a high left ball. I think the save I made in MLS Cup is a perfect example."
"They are both good," Club Director of Goalkeeping Tom Dutra. "I have had so many people ask me the same thing, and I think they are both equally great. I think the one in the final is still better, but [Wednesday's] was a timely save."
Frei's save is a memorable moment from a dominant performance that saw the Sounders score three goals in a commanding 3-0 win over first-place Vancouver. Furthermore, the save maintained Frei's shutout en route to his career-high 11th clean sheet of the season. The mark also ties Kasey Keller's club record for a single season, which he achieved in 2010.
"The goalkeeping has been fantastic this season from top to bottom," Dutra said. "We are't hung up on stats and we don't try to set a goal of a certain amount of shutouts, but we just want to go out and do our job every day."
On top of all of that, his 56 career shutouts puts him in ninth place in MLS history.
"It means I have been blessed with good teammates," Frei said of his slew of shutout milestones. "It's a team sport and this is a stat that somehow gets attached to goalkeepers, but it's not attainable as a single player. It's nice because it means we're doing something well as a team and I hope we can keep it going. When I am retired it will be nice to be up there with the greats."
