Queen's students played their first game of hockey in 1886 against cadets from the Royal Military College, a match on Kingston's harbour that is sometimes referred to as the first hockey game in Canada. In fact, the game had been played for some years in Quebec, and students from McGill had also travelled to Ontario to play exhibition games in Ottawa. But this game appears to have been the first between two Ontario teams.
Queen's won the game 1-0 on a goal that depended on a quirk of the converted recreational rink on which it was played. On a headlong rush down the ice, Queen's Lennox Irving feigned skating left around a large bandstand which stood in the middle of the rink and then dashed to the right, leaving RMC's defencemen lost on the other side. He skated alone at the goal, took a quick shot at the goalie and swiped the rebound through the posts.
The game is commemorated every year by the two schools in a competition for the Carr-Harris Cup.