GREEN BAY — It wasn't as bitterly contested as the Ice Bowl. It wasn't quite as dramatic as the Ice Bowl. It wasn't even as brutally cold as the Ice Bowl.

Unfortunately for the Green Bay Packers, it didn't end like the Ice Bowl, either.

In a game that will forever be known as Ice Bowl II, the New York Giants put an abrupt end to the Packers' magical season with a 23-20 overtime victory in the NFC Championship Game Sunday at frigid Lambeau Field.

With the temperature at minus-1, it was the second-coldest game in Lambeau history. The coldest, of course, was the Ice Bowl, the famous game in which the Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys 40 years ago.

But this was not Packers legend Bart Starr diving over the goal line on a do-or-die quarterback sneak with time running out. It was the Giants' Lawrence Tynes kicking a 47-yard field goal in overtime, although, given his two fourth-quarter misses, it certainly was no gimme.

If there was a gimme Sunday, it was supposed to be a Packers victory.

Their meteroic, two-year rise from the bottom of the NFC North to a 13-3 title contender had produced one of the NFL's deepest, most balanced teams. It seemed preordained that quarterback Brett Favre's revival tour would end up in Super Bowl XLII, where the Packers would be the NFL's last, best chance to derail New England's perfect Patriots.

Indeed, the NFC title game was the last place anyone expected Green Bay's season to end. To the Packers, their hardy fans, the smitten national media and the Fox Television executives dying for a Favre vs. Patriots storyline, it simply wasn't supposed to end like this.

Not on the Packers-friendly frozen tundra. Not with Starr serving as honorary captain. Not at the hands of a Giants team the Packers had drilled in September. And certainly not with Favre throwing the game-deciding interception in overtime.

''It's very disappointing,'' Favre said. ''I thought we had this one. It felt like everything had fallen into place. All that was left was to play the game and see what happened.''

What happened was that the Packers were taken out of their game by a physical, mistake-free, well-coached Giants team that will enter the Super Bowl with three playoff wins — all, amazingly, on the road. Whatever the Packers had been doing well lately, it was taken away by an opponent that played better in the frosty conditions than they did.

Running back Ryan Grant, the Giants reject who had come out of nowhere to balance out the Packers offense, managed just 29 yards on 13 carries. Criticize Packers coach Mike McCarthy for abandoning the run if you want, but his team never gave any indication that it could run against the Giants. That made the Packers as frighteningly one-dimensional as they were early in the season.

The defense never got the Giants under control, either. Inconsistent all season, its flaws surfaced when it couldn't stop the Giants' bait-and-switch running tandem of Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw or 6-foot-5 wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who was too big for Pro Bowl cornerback Al Harris.

More important, young quarterback Eli Manning, who was expected to freeze up in the cold, instead played error-free football and repeatedly kept drives alive with accurate throws.

Favre kept the one-dimensional Packers in the game, primarily with passes to Donald Driver. But with the game squarely on his shoulders in overtime, Favre finally cracked, throwing a floater to Driver that was picked off by Corey Webster. It was a pass that looked more like the old, impatient Favre of recent posteasons than the under-control Favre of this season.

Given Favre's renaissance, an interception was not an ending anyone anticipated for Ice Bowl II. In fact, almost everyone expected the Packers to reach Super Bowl XLII.

''It's shocking to your system,'' Packers general manager Ted Thompson said. ''You're going along, you're winning, you're planning for the next thing and all of a sudden, boom, it's over. That's the thing that's difficult to realize. In fact, until I get by myself probably, it's not really (possible to) come to grips with it. It's disappointing to lose. I'm sure it was disappointing for San Diego to lose (to New England) today. Because the next game is the game that you want to try to get to. We didn't quite make it.''

That was something no one had really considered.

''You're devastated,'' Packers defensive tackle Ryan Pickett said. "Somebody's celebrating on your field, going to the Super Bowl, and we felt like we were the better team. It hurts. It definitely hurts.''

Given the opportunity the Packers squandered in Ice Bowl II, it should.