Dillon Ward’s Mammoth career began with a red herring.
As a rookie for Colorado in 2014, Ward opened the season as a backup before making his first National Lacrosse League start in the team’s fourth game in Edmonton.
The goalie got shelled.
“That was my welcome-to-the-NLL moment, because it did not go well (in a 17-6 loss),” Ward said. “I remember starting out really hot, but then sometime around the second quarter, the wheels started falling off. Next thing you know, I’m just not making any saves.”
That early failure, however, was the inauspicious genesis to what’s become a legendary lacrosse career.
Now in his 13th season as the franchise leader in games played has emerged as one of lacrosse’s all-time greatest goalies. He’s won at every professional level, with most of his highlights coming in Colorado.
Ward won an NLL title with the Mammoth in 2022, and a championship with the Philadelphia Waterdogs in the Premier Lacrosse League He also won a Major League Lacrosse championship with the Denver Outlaws in 2018 and three world championships with Team Canada on the international stage, with the 2014 outdoor crown coming at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park where he was MVP.
“Winning a championship in ’22 was awesome, and probably my favorite moment with the Mammoth,” Ward said. “Especially because that core of the team had been together for almost a decade. It was a great payoff.”
Now 34, Ward is showing no signs of slowing up. He is under contract through 2027, but wants to play to and possibly through age 40. Entering the weekend, in the NLL this season among starting goalies with an 82% save rate, and is also second in goals allowed per game at 9.08.
“He’s still working on that final part of his resume to complete his body of work, but he’s already paved the way for a lot of goalies, both in the box and the field game,” said Toronto Rock head coach Matt Sawyer, who coached Ward in youth lacrosse in Orangeville, Ontario. “And he’s certainly already going to go down as as one of the best in both.
“All teams are searching for that cornerstone goalie. So when you have one like the Mammoth do, you’re not giving it up. Especially because he’s a big-game, big-moment type of goalie who is at his best in those situations.”
That was evident in 2022, when Ward made an NLL Finals-record 55 saves in the deciding Game 3 victory over the Buffalo Bandits, It’s a clutch gene that Ward’s had since his youth days.
Special from the start
As a 17-year-old backup in his second year playing for Sawyer on the Orangeville Junior A team (the highest level of junior lacrosse in Canada), Ward was called upon in the final few minutes of the Minto Cup, the Canadian junior championship. Orangeville’s starting goalie was ejected due to an equipment violation, so Ward had to come in and protect a one-goal lead.
He did just that, including making several flashy saves, including stopping a one-on-one shot at the top of the crease, to allow his team to clinch the national title.
“You knew that from that moment Dylan was going to be special,” recalled Andrew Suitor, Ward’s Orangeville teammate who is now an assistant coach for the Halifax Thunderbirds. “That just added on to his (phenom status), because you can also say you knew he was going to be special when he was the best goalie in Canada throughout his life growing up.”
Ward helped his team to four Ontario junior championships, and then was a starter on the 2012 team that won the Minto Cup. After becoming a college standout as Bellarmine’s first All-American, the Mammoth drafted him third overall in 2013, making him the first goalie picked in the top three in 14 years.
The pick quickly paid dividends as Ward emerged as an NLL All-Pro goalie and was named the league’s 2017 Goaltender of the Year. But because of the Mammoth’s inability to make deep playoff runs in the first part of Ward’s tenure, seventh-year Mammoth said Ward “deserved better than what we were giving him in that time.”
“He probably put us in a position (to consistently make the playoffs) where we wouldn’t have been without him,” said Coyle, who is in his 10th year with the organization. “Believe it or not, I feel like he’s not talked about enough in what he’s accomplished and how good of a goalie he is. Part of that, I think, is being in Denver, which doesn’t get a lot of notice in the big picture of the NLL. And part of that is because Dylan just quietly goes about his business — he’s not this big, flamboyant personality.”
Coyle also pointed out that the Mammoth probably wouldn’t have won the franchise’s second title in ’22 if not for Ward, considering the injuries the team sustained to two top offensive players, Ryan Lee and Eli McLaughlin, during the playoffs.
“We just caught lightning in a bottle, but mostly it was Dillon,” Coyle said. “I feel like he single-handedly won that championship for us.”
Riding a franchise-best win streak
Ward’s 6-foot-5, 195-pound frame takes away angles for opposing shooters, especially when he plays near the top of the crease. Coyle said that makes shooters “automatically tighten up with their shots,” and Ward’s longtime Colorado teammate, agrees.
“I’m not a goalie whisperer by any means, but his mindset is probably the first spot where his dominance starts other than his technique,” Hope said. “… He’s also very good technically in regards to, he doesn’t move around a ton, he saves his energy, he plays his angles really well and is able to close those angles up whenever someone does make a move near the net.”
This season, the Mammoth are 8-2 and in second place in one game behind the Saskatchewan Rush. It’s a reinvigorated squad after the Mammoth missed the playoffs the past two years following a championship defeat while attempting to repeat in 2023. During that lull, Ward remained elite: Despite an 8-10 record last season, the goalie
Heading into Friday’s game against the Rock in Toronto, the Mammoth are riding a while looking championship-caliber once again.
While Ward is once again the stabilizer in net, the attack can cook, too, as evidenced by a 20-9 victory over Buffalo on Jan. 31 that Andrew Kew and Will Malcom headline the offense, and Coyle believes that as long as the Mammoth “don’t start reading too many of our press clippings, and we don’t rely solely on Dillon, we’re going to be okay.”
“We have to have an underdog mentality carrying out through the rest of the season, regardless of our record, and we should be focused on getting a home playoff game,” Coyle said. “I feel like we’re on the precipice of arriving, but we haven’t arrived yet.”
