If revenge is a dish best served cold, then the Vikings are seven months and 90 degrees late to their reunion with the Seahawks, who high-stepped their frostbitten feet out of TCF Bank Stadium on Jan. 10 with a wild-card victory between their chattering teeth.

Minnesota’s trip to Seattle for Thursday night’s second preseason game features all the soul of switching dryer loads — a perfunctory task to gouge NFL season-ticket holders dressed up as a chance to analyze the gap-lane integrity of third-string defensive tackles.

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Sure, if Steven Hauschka pulls an extra-point kick into Puget Sound, some Vikings fans might curl their lips into a smile before muscle memory kicks in and the scowl returns. Ideas about what might have been if only Blair Walsh had chipped in that field goal and punched Minnesota’s ticket to Arizona and a second-round date with the vulnerable Cardinals.

The hot flashes return, followed by the headaches and dark thoughts and waking up in a puddle of your own sick with an arraignment notice crumpled in a bloody fist.

It is convenient to scapegoat Walsh for missing a last-minute 27-yard field goal to win a playoff game after he’d already made three kicks in the shattering cold, including a pair from beyond 40 yards.

He is an NFL kicker, after all. And the Vikings deserved to win because they dominated defensively. The team carried the emotional baggage of four decades worth of franchise agony onto that tundra. Besides, 88-year-old Bud Grant risked cryogenic death by strolling out for the coin toss in shirt sleeves.

You cannot relitigate the Vikings’ latest postseason collapse without spreading blame. No single failure accounted for the 10-9 loss, only the last one.

Show me Walsh shanking left and I’ll point to another toxic Adrian Peterson fumble or Captain Munnerlyn over-pursuing Russell Wilson on a busted shotgun snap.

Brett Favre intercepted by Tracy Porter in the ’09 NFC championship game? How about 12 men in the huddle off a timeout and five turnovers?

Gary Anderson wide left in ’98? There was Robert Smith running out of bounds late in the fourth quarter instead of milking the clock, Dennis Green taking a knee before overtime and Randy Moss dropping a pass in the end zone.

Each gaffe was equally fatal, but finality is what we remember, so we demonize the most obvious flaw.

“I watched it a couple times; I didn’t grind over it,” coach Mike Zimmer said Tuesday about the forensic video. “Not really any more than some of the other (losses), I guess.”

Walsh has been paying his penance in interviews ever since but refuses to become a martyr. More power to him. He plunged so deeply on his sword in that funereal postgame locker room that Bill Buckner cried out in pain.

It has been business as usual for the fifth-year kicker, who has looked sharp from all distances during training camp. He clanged a 51-yard field goal off and over the crossbar in Friday night’s preseason opener at Cincinnati, a 17-16 victory.

“He said, ‘Hey, thanks for letting me kick it,’ ” Zimmer recounted. “But I would’ve let him kick it, anyway.”

In other words, get off the therapist’s couch and embrace the day. There is too much optimism at the dawn of the 2016 season to dwell on the jarring conclusion of 2015.

Walsh will have plenty of opportunity for redemption during the regular season, probably in the postseason, too. Metro Transit is designing a Purple Line to run him out of town if he face-plants again.

Favre’s meltdown in New Orleans 6½ years ago was the end of an era for the swashbuckling hall of famer, who took his rightful place in Canton a week and a half ago with a graceful acceptance speech for the ages.

No matter how hard the Vikings tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in 2010, using $20 million worth of spackling and all of Zygi Wilf’s horses and men, that Super Bowl window was nailed shut by the dirty Saints in the Superdome.

Walsh’s miss and the Vikings’ resolute response to the pain of that missed opportunity, combined with the collective hunger of a well-coached roster of rising stars, point to salvation for the kicker and a fan base starving to end its 40-year Super Bowl famine.

That is a hot dish worth craving.