Cozens, who starred last season for the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the Western Hockey League, a major junior league, has been an inspiration for her son and many other children in the Yukon, O’Brien said.

“It gave them a lot more hope,” she said.

‘We’ve always prided ourselves in not being fun to play against.’

For many players in the towns in the territories, where the temperatures are low and the winters are long, the game starts on the pond.

When Dylan Cozens turned 3, his father, Mike, built a small rink in the backyard where Dylan, with his friends or brothers, would run games throughout the winter. When the ice melted, he spent hours alone atop a slick white hockey pad some 25 feet in front of the net, perfecting his wrist shots and dekes.

Even today, the mileage on the old rink is evident. Hundreds of divots and scuff marks fill much of the 12-foot wooden backstop behind the net.

“I’ve spent so much time out there, some of the best memories of my life,” Dylan Cozens said in a phone interview from Buffalo in September.

Hockey culture in Whitehorse is a lifelong cycle. It’s a place where people begin playing as toddlers and continue until they are in 55-and-over recreation leagues.

The people from Whitehorse are “just very honest hockey players,” Lawrie said. “We’ve always prided ourselves in not being fun to play against.”