SUNDAY WAS a relatively warm three below zero, and we simply bundled up and went out to watch the playoffs and finals. The cold of the last couple of days had resulted in far fewer spectators than originally predicted. In 2007, nearly 20,000 people had shown up to watch, but this year, media warned citizens to stay inside. Still, the reporters ignored their own advice: Local TV stations started filming weather segments on the ice, with anchors chuckling about the loonies on the pond.

Many of the fans did look a bit unusual. There were a number of enormous snowmobile suits, in colors like olive camouflage and safety orange. There were a variety of dead animals on people's heads: Some looked roughly like hats; many looked like something that just decided to winter there. One spectator got drilled in the side of the knee by a wandering pass and hobbled off like Ahab.

Among the players, there were a number of bloody noses and cut lips. One game in the senior division was marked by nearly constant pushing and shoving—a bunch of ex-Princeton players were going up against some aging former Olympians—and it devolved into a bona fide fight at the end, though the gloves were never dropped, it being too cold.

The finals were played in front of the beer tent and featured the Bandits and a team sponsored by a local builder, Wright Homes. Wright had a secret weapon, a minor-league veteran named Dave "Shuter" Shute. He played with a jerky, hopped-up style and wore a helmet that looked like it had been assembled from a pair of old football pads. He dashed around the goal like a squirrel and put enough pucks in to defeat the Bandits 8–4.

In the final moments of the weekend, Haber­man, his right arm in a sling thanks to a broken wrist he'd suffered in a game on Saturday, awarded the Golden Shovel to Wright Homes. Shuter, looking like a delighted kid who'd built his own space suit, babbled into the cameras about the cult of hockey. The Wright players, one by one, skated stately and solemn circuits of the rink, pushing along the golden shovel in a mockery of the ceremonial tours with the Stanley Cup.

It was all very ridiculous, and beautiful, and I was already thinking about next year.