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Montreal has had a bad case of frostbite this winter. The kind of frigid temperatures that leave you wondering if you should wear a tuque to bed, or phone in sick with wind-chill poisoning.

But the big chill of 2015 is good news in Lachine, where organizers of the fifth annual Montreal Pond Hockey Festival will stage an outdoor tournament this weekend on the frozen shores of Lac St. Louis.

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For the next two days, more than 400 hockey players, clad in long johns and turtlenecks, will compete for not much more than bragging rights among the 59 teams that hail from across North America.

Although more cold weather and snow is forecast this weekend, Hudson’s Bay rules will prevail on the windswept playing surfaces.

“You either embrace winter or you die,” said organizer Sean Berry, a hockey diehard who remembers a few years ago when mild weather nearly wiped out the event.

“This year, the ice is more than two feet thick, and we’ve worked hard to make it smooth,” Berry said.