THE UNITED STATES isn't much of a hockey nation, and that's how most hardcore American fans prefer it. It's like how a guy from New Orleans might feel about crawfish. He loves them, but that doesn't mean he wants to see them on the dollar menu at McDonald's.

Among the hockey cognoscenti, however, the devotion runs deep, and there definitely seems to be some sort of pond-hockey mania going on. One measure: All 160 spots in the open division of the 2008 U.S. Pond Hockey Championships (USPHC) were filled a day after registration opened the previous October.

The USPHC, inaugurated in 2006, is the premier tournament in the country, attracting some of the most talented players in North America. Dozens of other tournaments have popped up in places like Lake Placid, New York, and Eagle River, Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, pond hockey's biggest tournaments are in Canada. Founded in 2002, the World Pond Hockey Championship, in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, hosts 120 teams from all over the world. The Canadian National Pond Hockey Championships, in Muskoka, Ontario, is in its third year and now fields 272 teams who play more than 700 games.

In both countries, the appeal is the same: Hockey is better outside. Pond Hockey, a documentary released on DVD this fall by Minnesota filmmaker Tommy Haines, argues that the outdoor game—with its emphasis on skill and speed over size—is true hockey. USPHC founder Fred Haberman certainly agrees. He likes to describe pond hockey as "hockey the way nature intended."

I met Haberman right after the Jets pummeled us 12–3. He was standing on a deck outside the beer tent, a structure built on a temporary scaffold over the beach fronting Lake Nokomis. Before him were the 25 rinks, 150 by 75 feet, which he and about 100 volunteers had been working on all week, scraping, shoveling, and watering them down. Haberman, 42, is a big, tall guy with a neat red beard, and for most of the weekend he wore a watch cap with the USPHC logo stitched on it. He runs a PR company in Minneapolis that represents Volvo and other national brands. (Our teammate Pete Stoddart works for him.)

"How's this for a midlife crisis?" Haberman asked. "Because that's basically how it started."

Haberman spent his childhood playing hockey on ponds in Wisconsin. He thought the scene there was pretty good, until he moved to Minnesota when he was 23. He likes to draw an analogy between pond hockey in Minnesota and pickup basketball in Harlem, and admits to putting together the USPHC after being inspired by Canadian pond tourneys. Haberman copies their game times, with two 15-minute periods and a five-minute halftime break (NHL games have three 20-minute periods), and speeds up the pace by adding boards around each rink, so the puck keeps moving rather than getting lost in snowbanks. "It seemed like we ought to have a U.S. version," he says. "I just had no idea how much work it would be."

From day one, his tournament has attracted ex-NHLers, college players of the first rank, and career minor-leaguers. Phil Housley and Brad Bombardir played this year on a team called RBC Dain Rauscher, after its sponsor. Housley, 44, is one of the legends of American hockey, an all-time great defenseman who played for the Buffalo Sabres and the Calgary Flames before retiring in 2003. Bombardir, 36, played for seven seasons in the NHL, most of them for the Minnesota Wild.

"That's one of the great things about pond hockey," says Haberman. "You might play a kid and you might play a legend. It doesn't matter. You just play."