“We always seem to poop the bed on alumni night and that never bodes well when you sit down with all the guys for a beer afterward. You don’t want to talk about the game,” Heyes, whose sense of humour never wanes, said of tonight’s home matchup against the Maple Ridge Burrards.
The Shamrocks will hoist Ranjit Dillon’s No. 5 jersey to the rafters after the first period on the annual Alumni Night. They will also recognize the 1997 Mann Cup team.
“I think that we’ve won one alumni game since I’ve been the head coach,” Heyes added with a chuckle. “I don’t think it’s the extra pressure, it’s just the way things have worked out.
“Alumni night will be fun though, especially recognizing the 1997 Mann Cup team that myself and Simmer and Hammy [assistant coaches Mike Simpson and John Hamilton] were a part of and a jersey retirement for Ranjit will be pretty neat. It’s nice that the organization has embraced the alumni and we get to have some fun out there,” he said in a more serious tone.
It becomes that much more fun with a win and the Shamrocks have tasted their share so far with a record of 6-1-1, while defending Western Lacrosse Association champion Maple Ridge is 4-3. The two teams also meet on Tuesday back on the Mainland.
“It’s going to be a great test,” Heyes said of the home-and-home matchup. “The team we played over there two weeks ago will not be the same team we see [tonight at 7:30]. They will have all of their pro guys back and it should be an intense atmosphere.”
The Shamrock are coming off an impressive 16-9 win in Nanaimo last Sunday in which Casey Jackson went off for eight goals and two assists and captain Corey Small added three tallies and six helpers.
Prior to last night’s play, Small led the WLA in a number of categories including goals (18), assists (29), shots (100) and, of course, total points (47). The latter was 18 better than Maple Ridge’s Mike Mallory’s 29. Jackson, after a trio of strong performances, is second in league scoring with 17 goals and tied for fourth in points (26), while playing just five games.
“We came out of the New West game not happy with our 60-minute game,” Heyes said of last Friday’s 12-12 overtime tie at home. “When the pressure and the desperation came, I think we pushed our game in the third period of that one.
“That carried itself into the Nanaimo game with an entirely different lineup. Casey, I think, is feeling pretty healthy after taking that time off from the hamstring injury. Everything seemed to be going in for him,” he said of Jackson.
Shamrocks fans will see if he can continue his torrid pace (13 goals and 20 points in the last three games). Small, meanwhile, is simply on fire, averaging 5.87 points per game, while twice recording 10-point nights to go with Sunday’s nine-point effort.
Tonight, however, is also about the alumni.
Dillon’s numbers were outstanding, from the moment he entered the Senior A league as rookie of the year in 1964. Three years later he was the scoring champion with 95 points in 29 games and named league MVP and a first-team all-star.
The next season he recorded a career high 116 points and he ultimately finished with 450 goals, 788 assists for 1,238 points in 453 games. He was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.
CLOVER POINTS: Rhys Duch is likely to get back into action tonight and goaltenders Aaron Bold and Adam Shute are here as well with Shute likely to sit out and join the team for Tuesday’s road outing.
