DAWSON CITY Philip Pritchard has been travelling with the Stanley Cup for 17 years.

He's currently the vice-president of the Resource Centre and curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, and was tickled to be able to bring the Cup and the other trophies to Dawson City late last week.

'Truthfully, I've always wanted to come here,' he said in an interview. 'I'm on the road 180 days a year.'

On this trip, he was with Walt Neubrand, who teaches for a living. There is another fellow who travels as well, and this keeps the Cup on the road some 250 days of the year.

While they're referred to on the hall's website as a security detail, Pritchard is a good deal more low-key than that.

'We're Cup-keepers, public relations, promotion, security, travel. We're the guys that lift it in and out of the box and the cars.'

While everyone else touches the Cup and gets as close as they can, Pritchard and his mates actually handle it with white gloves, as if it were a museum artifact.

'Museums do that,' he said. ' We started doing it and somebody thought it was pretty cool that we did it, and it just became tradition. They don't believe it's us until they see our white gloves.'

Pritchard says people go crazy over the Cup wherever it appears.

'It's the greatest sport in the world. It's a fabulous trophy. It's got a ton of history. Hockey and Canada have grown up together since the late 1800s.

'For the City of Dawson that competed for it 100 years ago, it's a great tradition, and it's a chance for the people of Dawson today to understand about their roots and their history.'

Pritchard says his original target date was the Commissioner's Ball in June, but that all the confusion related to the-then NHL lockout just left a lot of things up in the air and made it hard to plan things.

'So then we started aiming for August and we got here (last Wednesday) night,' he said.

'We're thrilled to be here.'

The Cup made an encore appearance in Whitehorse last Saturday, drawing several hundred eager fans to the Gold Rush Inn.