If you freeze it, they will come

The stinging cold pulls at your nostrils the second you inhale.

Each day’s high temperatures are barely above 0 degrees, and the wind whipping across Mirror Lake takes the frigidity even lower. Wind-driven snow pelts your face. Hair and snow become one.

In the distance are white-capped mountains seemingly encasing the cold.

All of it combines for a winter welcome mat as inviting as an East Side prison.

Yet, undeniable warmth is everywhere.

Not on your skin but in your soul. This is Lake Placid.

Thirty years ago, a miracle happened here.

Team USA defeated Russia in an Olympic hockey game, and then won the gold medal the next game. Defeating Russia would be equivalent to Youngstown State, or perhaps even a local high school squad, beating Ohio State in football.

“The Miracle on Ice.”

Mix in the Cold War reality of the era, and it was a seminal moment, says Poland’s Tom Boniface.

It’s that miracle that has lured him and his friends for six years to play in a men’s hockey tourney on the frozen waters of Mirror Lake in the heart of Lake Placid — a burg of a place not much bigger than Boniface’s Poland.

“The lesson from this city is that you can do anything you put your mind to. That’s the magic of this place,” said Boniface, who’ll be 51 next month. His measured words emphasize the impact of that 1980 moment on him, and it’s shared with the rest of his group. I got to share the weekend with them.

“It’s a sentinel moment in sports history. As we get older, we try to picture this place. We all remember 1980. I’m living in the past and happy to be there.”

Happily joining him in the past is Jim Rapone of Warren. Rapone is the self-appointed social director, and at 64, is also the oldest participant.

He’s excited to be up here with the boys, including opponents not even from the Valley. When the boys from Boston arrived, it was hugs and high-fives all around, and Rapone’s hotel room became ground zero for the celebration of hockey and life.

“This [place] is walking through history. The history of Team USA and the championship — that’s what drew me here. It didn’t let me down, either.”

And playing on an open lake stirs his Warren upbringing.

“I grew up playing sandlot hockey. We played at Quinby and Packard parks,” said Rapone, whose every word sounds as if he could have been any character on “The Sopranos.”

“This is the rewinding of the video back to when you were a kid — sharp cold, digging pucks out of snow banks — it rekindles feelings of the old days. And at 64, that’s an experience.”

Boniface and Rapone are joined by 10 men from the Valley and 350 or so others ranging in age from their young 20s to, well, Rapone.

And they come to Lake Placid from all over — Texas, North Carolina, Washington state, Maryland, Cape Cod and Ohio.

The hockey’s not good in terms of conditions. Imagine bowling over potholes. Saturday’s game-time temperature was minus 13 degrees. But it’s Lake Placid, and it’s hockey the way the first Canadians played the game.

The two Valley teams struggled Friday, one going 1-1 and the other 0-2. The three losses were not close at all, like YSU-OSU football scores. The Saturday games were a little better, but still losses.

We are on our way home today, and soon the miracle will be replaced by the mundane of the regular Sunday pickup games at the Ice Zone.

But life has its annual calls, and in time, the miracle of 1980 will call again. Rapone, at 64, knows it is harder for him each year.

“There are not too many guys who collect Social Security and play hockey. As long as the boys say I’m productive, I’m here. It’ll come to a close at some point. Then I’ll skate off into the sunset — and come back here to coach.”

Boniface seems far too strategic and measured to be up here for another 15 years or so until he’s 64.

That he’s still playing is much to his wife’s dismay.

He launched this trip several years ago to mark 25 years of the “Miracle.” It was a once-in-a- lifetime trip that is now in its sixth year.

It was his son Nick’s youth hockey that pulled Tom into the sport, and he wants to make the Lake Placid trip with Nick, who’s 18.

“I just want to be out here with him,” said Tom. “I want to do this till he’s 20 and he can come up here with me.

“Someday ...”