Familiar faces rejoin Shamrocks

Aaron Bold returns to the fold of the Victoria Shamrocks tonight.

After closing out the National Lacrosse League campaign with the Saskatchewan Rush last weekend, the Victoria product will make his first start tonight for the ’Rocks against New Westminster. Bold was an instrumental part of the 2015 Mann Cup championship with the local WLA club.

“Goaltending is such a vital position, for where we want to go,” said Shamrocks head coach Bob Heyes. “You have to have that depth, but you also need that go-to guy, who has that championship pedigree, who’s been there.

“I made the comment, when we first signed him this year, it’s like having [Montreal Canadiens goalie] Carey Price here, he’s that dominant. But it doesn’t give you a guarantee that you’re going to win anything. The rest of the team has to follow suit. It takes a full team effort.”

Bold was expected to play the minimum five games required to be eligible for playoffs. He comes in early after the Rush — looking for a third straight NLL championship — lost to Georgia last weekend.

“I wanted to get him here as soon as we could after their season was over just to get focused in on our season. This wasn’t a game where he was scheduled to be here, but we were able to make it work,” Heyes said of Bold, who flies in today. “I’m happy to have him here. Hags [Cody Hagedorn] has been awesome — we couldn’t have asked for more from him and he is going to remain a big part of the rotation here.”

Bold is not the only Mann Cup champion returning to the club. Transition player Tyler Hass is also back in the green and white tonight.

In five seasons with the Shamrocks, Hass played 64 games with 55 points in the regular season and 57 games with 49 points in the playoffs.

The Victoria native also won the Bill Ellison Trophy as most valuable player in the 2014 WLA playoffs.