The Colorado Mammoth on Thursday signed goaltender Dillon Ward to a five-year contract, just months after he was named MVP of the World Lacrosse Championships for .
The deal — financial terms of which were not disclosed — is pending National Lacrosse League approval. The contract’s length matches the longest the Mammoth has ever offered a player.
“It was a contract I couldn’t refuse,” Ward, 23, told The Denver Post. “Denver’s an unbelievable city and I’m looking forward to being there for a long time.”
Ward, selected third in the 2013 NLL entry draft, was on a standard one-year rookie deal and was the only first-year starting goaltender in the league. He is one of three finalists for the Rookie of the Year Award — to be presented Sept. 21 in Oakville, Ontario — after he finished the regular season fifth in the NLL with seven wins with an eighth-ranking .773 save percentage. in Commerce City, which culminated in an 8-5 win July 19 over Team USA. Moving between the indoor game and outdoor game, as Ward has done, is very rare.
“As a rookie in 2014, Dillon showed great poise between the pipes as he helped lead us to the postseason,” Steve Govett, Mammoth president and general manager, said in a statement.
The Mammoth, which lost in the first round of the playoffs in overtime on the road against the Calgary Roughnecks on May 3, played the second half of the season without a head coach, — Pat Coyle, Dan Stroup and Chris Gill. All three are entering the final year of a two-year deal.
Ward previously played goaltender in ice hockey before making the switch to lacrosse in high school, about a decade ago, at the advice of his mother and father, . He lives in his hometown of Orangeville, Ontario, during the offseason, but lives in Denver in-season.
Said Ward: “This past couple of months have shown that I made the right decision.”
Daniel Petty: 303-954-1081, dpetty@denverpost.com or twitter.com/danielpetty
