2015 Real Salt Lake schedule: The highlights and lowlights

Real Salt Lake's 2015 schedule was released yesterday, and since then, we've been combing it over, looking for the most meaningful and exciting matches. While we do thing that most matches will indeed be exciting, we've pinpointed some to look at.

The toughest stretch (by 2014 playoff standards)

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Real Salt Lake isn't scheduled to play more than three matches in a row against teams that made the playoffs in 2014. We have a few stretches like that, but it actually seems reasonably balanced otherwise.

We have those stretches in April (SKC, Vancouver, and New England), June (SKC, NYRB, and Columbus) and at the edge of July and August (SKC, DC United, and Vancouver).

Our Eastern excursions

- April 25: New England
- May 9: Chicago Fire
- May 16: Montreal Impact
- June 24: New York Red Bulls
- August 1: DC United

The busiest month

It's May by a long shot. We play seven times in May; the most we play in any other month is five (August.) The busy qualities of May are in part owing to the Gold Cup in the summer and CONCACAF Champions League in the fall. But still, it'll be a tough stretch.

The rivalry matches

I guess we're counting Colorado Rapids as our only pure rival right now, but you could always argue for LA Galaxy and Seattle Sounders as rivals, and now we've got Sporting KC three times to contend with. We've also got a new addition to the pile of kinda-rivals, and we'll count them instead of the usual suspects.

- RSL v. Colorado Rapids: June 7 (home), July 12 (away) and October 3 (away)
- RSL v. our new rivals, New York City FC: May 23
- RSL v. those guys that won the cup when we should have (er, Sporting KC): April 11 (away), June 21 (home), and July 24 (home).

Matches against Chivas at home for revenge

Wait, they're gone? Oh. Sad.