FREEPORT — Mike Poulin shuffled onto the ice in a thin sweatshirt, worn jeans and a hat.

“How long will you be out here?” he asked the small group sitting on the bench.

A hockey game went on around him. Skates cut through the ice. The puck ricocheted off their sticks and wiggled through a tangle of legs. A goal.

“We’ll be out here,” Kris Jennings said. “Go get your skates.”

An hour earlier, Poulin was at the doctor’s office getting a shot of cortisone in his hip. Naturally, his next stop was the pond.

He stepped back onto the ice a few minutes later, this time wearing more appropriate gear: Bright red gloves, a white jersey and a black helmet with a face mask. Within 30 seconds, he scored.

“I think it’s feeling alright,” he said about his hip, as he glided to the other side of the rink.

Poulin, a 71-year-old retired engineer and technical consultant, is one of the Silver Skaters, a group of pond hockey players mostly ages 60 or older. He found out about the group through a friend of a friend when he moved from Texas to Kennebunk a couple of years ago, and has been playing ever since.

There are approximately 55 people on the email list, so even on a 12-degree day this month, they had enough to field a game. The group is open to players of all genders. Occasionally, a few women join.

Sometimes it’s five versus five. Other times, it’s four on four. It all depends on how many people are there, and the size of the ice.

“We like to have a couple of people on the bench,” said Jim Donoghue, one of the group’s founders. “At our age, we like to rest.”

It’s their seventh season, and an opportunity for retirees to play during the week in a slower, safer and less-competitive environment, according to Donoghue. Many of them have been skating together and playing pond hockey for decades.

And it’s a way to combat the isolation that so many older adults face.

“These are my winter friends,” Donoghue said. Often, they’ll get coffee together after a game, and sometimes they meet up on the Royal River in Yarmouth just to skate together.

“Some of my favorite memories are just standing around, putting our skates on and just talking, laughing and teasing each other,” he said. “It’s a classic locker room atmosphere with a wonderful group of people.”

The Silver Skaters play whenever and wherever the ice is good, including the Cape Elizabeth Community Arena on Wednesday mornings. They’ve also been known to skate at Knights Pond in South Berwick, Massacre Pond in Scarborough and Porter’s Landing in Freeport.

“Some people go to the gym, and some people jog,” Donoghue said. “We play pond hockey.”

COMMUNITY ON ICE

It was a clear winter day on Jan. 2: Sunny, windless and bone-chillingly cold, and the group gathered at a private snow-covered pond in Freeport, their favorite place to skate. Only the oval rink was exposed, shining like obsidian.

Jennings’ home overlooks the pond. He started inviting friends to come skate decades ago.

At first it was just the three educators: Donoghue, Bill Rixon — then a teacher at Greely High School whom Donoghue met while coaching ice hockey — and Pat McGillicuddy.

They met up with Jennings and a crew of his friends, and the group grew from there.

“It was just word of mouth,” Donoghue said. They eventually had enough players to play a game.

Back on the ice this month, members asked after each other’s families as they tightened their skates, sitting on wooden benches and porch furniture parked on the ice. A neon green kayak sat nearby, covered with snow.

Some, like Rocco LaPenta, 78, wore pads, a recent Amazon purchase after a fall several months ago left his hip tender and bruised. Others dressed more casually. Jennings wore jeans.

Those who were already in their gear unfurled a long chain of PVC pipes, a makeshift solution to keep the puck in bounds. One by one, the players skated onto the ice pocked with cracks along its surface, evidence of previous games.

To pick the teams, each player tosses their stick into the middle. Usually the youngest player separates the sticks to decide who plays on each side. Once, that power went to the person who had had the most colonoscopies.

Half of the people donned yellow pinnies, and the game began. The air was punctuated by the percussive rhythm of sticks hitting the puck.

The players cut and turned, whizzing from side to side. Some passes were completed. Others went sailing beyond their target.

They didn’t keep score, and subbing, like most hockey games, was fluid.

A GROUP FOR EVERYONE

The Silver Skaters are open to hockey players of all skill levels, as long as they “get it.”

The rules are simple: Keep the puck on the ice. No hitting. Have fun with each other. And no knuckleheads.

“Knuckleheads take it a little too seriously,” Donoghue said. “If the idea of pond hockey is to go home and tell your friends, wife or husband that you scored so many goals, then maybe this isn’t for you.”

And it’s for the old at heart.

Marty Rinaldi, a police officer in Brunswick who can hear the action on the ice from his house on the hill above the pond, is the youngest of the group. He’s 57 — a patch of gray hair beneath his hat was a sufficient entry ticket for the group — though he’s been playing with some of these guys for 25 years.

Rixon, who’s turning 80 in May, is the oldest member.

His parents were Canadian, so hockey was a rite of passage growing up. “They put me in skates as soon as they could,” he said.

He played Division I hockey at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and he’s been skating on this particular pond for 40 years. When the snow’s suitable, he skis cross-country a mile through the woods from his house to make it to the games.

“It’s much more relaxed,” he said. “It’s a nice tempo.”

Some skaters learned the art of pond hockey later in life.

McGillicuddy started skating in his late 30s. He became friends with Donoghue when they both taught at Pownal Elementary School.

“He was such a nut about it,” McGillicuddy said of his friend’s affinity for hockey. He decided to learn how to play hockey by the age of 40 and practiced multiple times a week.

“It’s easy to find ice if you look hard enough,” McGillicuddy said.

PRESERVING THE SACRED ICE

After the last goal, a few players skated laps around the rink while shoveling away the remnants of fast turns and jukes. Maintaining the ice is a group effort.

Jennings walked up with a chainsaw. He carved a square hole in the ice, and water sprayed everywhere.

He submerged a plastic bucket into the freezing water and poured the water on the large cracks that had formed in the middle of the rink. Poulin crawled behind him, using a puck to pack in snow to reseal the surface.

The pond will be ready for more hockey tomorrow, Jennings said.