Dawson City Nuggets

The Nuggets made the 4,000 mile (6,400 km) journey to Ottawa over several weeks, travelling by dog sled, bicycle, foot, train, and ship.

The Nuggets issued a Stanley Cup challenge against the reigning champion Ottawa Hockey Club, known at the time as "The Silver Seven", in the summer of 1904.

[2] The Dawson City team was sponsored and managed by the Klondike entrepreneur Joseph W. Boyle, and it was composed of men from the mining camps during the tail-end of the Yukon gold rush.

Dawson City's challenge was accepted in the summer of 1904 by the Stanley Cup trustees, scheduled (inauspiciously) to start on Friday, January 13, 1905.

At first the team made good progress, but the weather turned warm enough to thaw the trail, meaning the players had to walk several hundred miles.

[7] The news got worse for McLennan and Watt, who were employed by the Yukon Territory gold commissioner's office when not playing hockey.

The day after the second game, the Yukon Territory announced that the pair would be laid off from work, effective immediately, albeit with pay until June 30, 1905.

Shortly before a 1997 re-enactment, Michael Onesi, a Whitehorse newspaper columnist, wryly commented that had the Dawson team triumphed in 1905, they would have had the longest dynasty in Stanley Cup history.

Challenges normally took place in the cup-holder's town, and visiting teams could not effectively play, after the brutal journey by overland coach to Dawson, their bodies blacker than a hockey puck from all the bruises of a dog sled ride.

In 1997, a team from Dawson competed against Ottawa Senators alumni in a re-enactment of the 1905 match, this time at the Corel Centre, complete with organ music, spotlights, and other such hullabaloo.

The team symbolically recreated the trip to Ottawa, though train service no longer ran between Whitehorse and the Pacific coast.