MILAN – The river is frozen hard as granite in the real Hockeytown, USA, where the wind chill out on Muskeg Bay is: Don’t ask.

But inside the Nomad Tavern – where if the piping-hot pizza doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart, a shot of Fireball might do the trick – there’s a Winter Olympics watch party raging against the perpetually gray skies of winter.

The joint is jumping like hometown hero and Team USA center Brock Nelson leaping over the boards to enthusiastically skate another shift for red, white and blue in Italy.

“How you doin’?” tavern proprietor Sal DeBiasse chirps into the phone, with a voice as hardy as a friendly slap on the back. “Yeah, we’ve got the hockey game on TV. The shots are flowing in honor of Brock. The place is going nuts.”

Beats working, eh?

But as long as I have DeBiasse on a transatlantic call, I want to know: How many folks in the real Hockeytown drop everything on a Thursday afternoon and take advantage of the Tavern unlocking its doors an hour early in order to support Nelson as he scores two goals for the red, white and blue in a 5-1 victory against Latvia.

“I’d say,” figures DeBiasse, doing a quick head count, “we’ve got about 15 people in here.”

Wait … what?

Perhaps I heard incorrectly. So, I double-check and ask DeBiasse if he meant to say fifty.

“No. Fifteen. One-five,” he replies. “Nice crowd.”

Well, only in the real Hockeytown would 15 fanatical puckheads count as a crowd.

But DeBiase isn’t wrong. In a friendly Burg with maybe 2,000 residents that sits 7.5 miles south of the Canadian border on the frozen Minnesota tundra, his Olympic watch party definitely qualifies as a nice community gathering.

Welcome to Warroad, Minn.

It’s the hometown of Nelson, and it made the 34-year-old center for the Colorado Avalanche what he is today.

And I’m not talking about being Team USA’s wily graybeard, with stubble as white as the Minnesota snow blanketing his mug.

“It’s crazy being the old guy,” Nelson tells me. “A couple (teammates) like to poke fun and point that out … The gray hair? I embrace that. I won’t color it up.”

During an interview with the Associated Press back in Denver before the NHL season went on hiatus for the Olympics, Nelson explained it was nearly preordained he would fall in love with hockey as a kid raised by Warroad.

“It’s pretty cold up there, so not a whole lot is going on. I feel like it’s hunt, fish or hockey,” Nelson said. “You get involved in it early and have that camaraderie with the group, the families. It holds a special place in my heart. I feel like hockey’s life up there.”

A river runs through Warroad. When it freezes every winter, volunteers dutifully groom the ice for miles until it becomes the skating version of a jogging trail.

That’s the beauty of Warroad. Rather than cursing it, ice means exercise to the local population. And frozen H20 also provides the No. 1 source of immense community pride.

“Hockey is everything to this town,” says DeBiasse, a New Jersey native who taught himself to spin pizza dough like a pro in Hawaii before loved ones drew him to the wilds of Minnesota. “Hockey is all people talk about. Hockey is all they think about. Hockey is all they do.”

So, don’t let Red Wings fans tell you Detroit is America’s Hockeytown, because the sport’s glory road leads to Warroad.

The United States has never won an Olympic gold medal without meaningful contributions from a proud son of Warroad on the roster. Brothers Bill and Roger Christian were members of the 1960 squad that went undefeated in seven games. Dave Christian experienced the Miracle on Ice in 1980. All of them share a hockey bloodline with Nelson.

“It’s a great place to grow up,” says the selfless fourth-line center for a U.S. team now undefeated after two games in pool play. “And it’s a special place for hockey.”

Warroad keeps no secrets. It’s a town where your neighbor is not only on a first-name basis, but might well know who your mother dated in high school.

Peewee hockey players of Warroad wrote best wishes to the Avalanche center that were hand-delivered to Italy by his younger brother, Blayke.

“My brother also brought me a Hockeytown USA pin for my collection,” Nelson says.

In Warroad, hockey is family and the tie that binds.

“Hey,” DeBiasse makes certain to tell me, “I know Brock’s brother. Blayke works for me in the summer. He’s a waiter at my restaurant. Good man. The whole family’s great.”

If Nelson wins hockey gold on the final day of these Winter Games, it will be the most impressive sporting achievement by anyone in Warroad since at least … 24 hours earlier.

On Feb. 21, anglers will drill through the ice at Lake of the Woods and snag walleye, northern pike and perch during the Springsteel Resort annual winter fishing derby.

First prize is $10,000.

The derby champ should buy pizza and beer for all 15 hockey fanatics who grab a seat in the Nomad for the final watch party of the Olympics, don’t you think?