Parker (l.) and York celebrate the last two NCAA championships.

Anyone who has followed college hockey for years know how entwined Boston University coach Jack Parker is to Boston College coach Jerry York. It’s not just because they are the respective coaches now of two arch rivals. It goes way back and way deeper.

There was no better person to sum this up than our friend and Boston Herald writer John Connolly, in a recent piece for the Herald. It’s a must read. You should check it out.

The article was written because today, the pair are being enshrined, together, in the New England Sports Museum Hall of Fame. It’s only fitting, as the bond continues.

Both Boston-area natives, the same age, but from two different towns, went to two different rival colleges — yet here they, having been responsible for winning the last two NCAA championships. Each one of those was the third for each coach. They flip flop as to who has the most wins — they are 1-2 among active coaches, each with over 800 — and they show no signs of slowing down as they chase Ron Mason’s record of 924.

This chart shows the current leaders (it doesn’t yet include this past season).

I seem to be in the minority among hockey “purists” about the Phoenix NHL situation, and about Sun Belt hockey in general. They seem to ally with the cause of Canadians who lament the NHL’s Southward drift, at the expense of old-school NHL places like Winnipeg and Quebec, and perhaps new ones like Hamilton.

But, perhaps because I have seen the boon to college hockey in recent years, I don’t look at it that way. All you have to do is take a quantitative look at college hockey rosters over the last 10 years to see the impact of the game being grown in non-traditional places. First it was places like Long Island and Pittsburgh that started getting more and more college players on the rosters. But then it becames places like Washington, then Texas just exploded, followed by the Carolinas and California, and yes, even Phoenix.

The Phoenix franchise itself might stink on the ice, but they could’ve stunk anywhere. (And let’s not forget — Winnipeg and Quebec were not NHL cities until 1980.)

The fact that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman gets so roundly booed everywhere he goes in a clueless reaction, I think, on the part of most fans. I don’t even think they know what they’re booing. It’s like the Canadians who boo the American anthem.

Recently Bettman met with the NHL Players’ Association, and I found it refreshing that player rep Michael Peca (a Canadian) chose a contrarian viewpoint to many of his fellow players.

“I actually share a lot of the feelings that the commissioner conveyed about the Phoenix situation,” Peca told ESPN.com. “When you’ve got a kid that plays hockey and you know hockey’s their life, you don’t want to ever see that taken away. You’ve got to build roots in communities.

“It’s easy to transplant a team into Toronto or Southern Ontario and it would succeed, but there’s a growing base of kids that are playing hockey and in minor hockey systems that are thriving now in these communities that you don’t want to rip away. It’s a touchy thing and hopefully those organizations work out.”

Here here to that.

Brian Leetch accepts the Conn Smythe Trophy as Stanley Cup playoff MVP in 1994.

Their stays may have been brief, but college hockey has its mark all over this year’s NHL Hall of Fame class. Brett Hull and Brian Leetch each had short, yet remarkable, college hockey careers before heading to the make their impact elsewhere. And as members of the iconic 1996 U.S. World Cup team, they will forever be remembered fondly by those who follow the college game so closely.

Hull, playing for Minnesota-Duluth, was the last college player to score 50 goals — an incredible number, even given the higher-scoring era. The pros weren’t sure he could handle the NHL at first — him not being the most adept skater, and so on, but soon his sniping skills were unstoppable in the NHL as well, as well as his mouth.

Leetch was dominant at Boston College for one season, before heading off with the 1988 U.S. Olympic team. In short order, he was leading the Rangers, winning the Rookie of the Year honors then a couple of Norris Trophies as the NHL’s top defenseman. And in 1994, became the first American to win the Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, leading the Rangers to their first Stanley Cup in 54 years.

Also inducted was Lou Lamoriello, and his legacy in college hockey goes deeper than either of the two players. Lamoriello, the former coach and then-AD at Providence, led the charge in creating Hockey East, when five teams split off from the ECAC to form the new league in 1984. The team that wins the Hockey East championship is now awarded a cup in Lamoriello’s name. He continued that legacy by being one of the first GMs to sign a lot of ex-college hockey players. His willingness to do that, when most of his peers were not, was part of the reason for the Devils’ edge, which led them to three Stanley Cup championships. He paved the way for teams to not be afraid of guys like Brian Gionta, and it has worked out for everyone. Lamoriello has a reputation for surliness and penny-pinching behind the scenes, but any time I’ve been able to talk to him about college hockey — whether at a World Cup or the draft — he’s been cordial and forthcoming with information.

Add Steve Yzerman and Luc Robitaille into the mix — two class players, with outstanding skills — and this is a Hall of Fame induction class for the ages. Congratulations to all on a well-deserved honor.

It’s hardly a secret now. Former North Dakota coach Dean Blais — a two-time NCAA champion — is returning to college hockey.

The Nebraska-Omaha program will get an infusion of enthusiasm and — very soon — talent. Expectations should ratchet upward, and Blais will hold everyone accountable from Day One.

It’s somewhat surprising in a way. New Omaha athletic director Trev Alberts has dropped some hints about making sure the school can afford the guy he decides to hire to run the hockey program. Blais is likely not coming cheap, but his pricetag was obviously not too high for UNO.

Nor should it be.

Omaha is a solid market, and it’s one this university can tap into with the right coach. While Blais might make a lot of money in his position, he will put a winning product on the ice, and he will do what it takes to make sure the program is successful.

Not only that, but you shouldn’t discount the experiences Blais has had in hockey. Among them was the work he did at North Dakota, a program that is as much a part of its home city as any other in the country. The North Dakota men could play a scrimmage against the Kentucky club team, and it would still sell a large number of tickets at the Ralph. Blais worked every day with a support staff that knows how to market a college hockey program.

In Fargo, he helped build a USHL franchise from scratch, and they just played for the Clark Cup title this spring.

With all this in mind, does UNO’s decision regarding the WCHA become easier with Blais on board?

There’s no question that Blais has a great amount of respect for the WCHA, and vice versa. I remember seeing him in Denver before a UMD game there a few years ago, when he had a chance to catch up with former Blais assistant and current UMD coach Scott Sandelin. Current North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol got the gig after Blais left, and he was an assistant prior to that. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone within the WCHA who doesn’t respect Blais.

Alberts admits he is learning about college hockey. That said, he is well-aware of the prestige of the WCHA. More importantly, the financial advantage the WCHA offers (for example, their per-school guarantee for the Final Five is much higher than the CCHA’s is for their league finals in Detroit) could really tip the scales in favor of this move. After all, Alberts talked at his introductory press conference about making a bigger deal out of hockey — UNO’s only Division I sport.

This might not be a slam dunk, but it’s as close as you’re going to get to one. Barring a major philosophical upset, I would expect Nebraska-Omaha to join Bemidji State in the WCHA. Not to brag, but it’s a solution I predicted nearly two years ago.

For years, one of the more entertaining college hockey discussions has been: Who will be the next coach at Boston University after Jack Parker? This conversation always has legs because — a) there was a time when Parker seemed closer to leaving (because of flirtations with the Boston Bruins, administrative jobs, etc…) … and b) because there are so many qualified candidates out there.

Parker wound up settling back in at BU, but, of course, he’s also getting older. Various candidates have come and gone since then, BU alumni and/or former Parker assistant coaches.

With today’s announcement that former BU All-American Joe Sacco has been named the new head coach of the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, that list just got bigger, and more interesting.

Names that used to lead the charge, have fallen off. Current Massachusetts head coach Don Cahoon, a BU player in the early ’70s, is not appreciably younger, relatively, than Parker at this point. Blaise McDonald, a former assistant, now head coach at Massachusetts-Lowell, has not distinguished himself, necessarily. Buddy Powers, former head coach at RPI and Bowling Green — same thing. Former assistant Brian Durocher now is head coach of BU’s women’s team, and seems ensconced there.

In the current sweepstakes lead, many consider it to be current top assistant David Quinn, a BU alum and one-time first round NHL pick. Though he is currently a candidate for Nebraska-Omaha’s opening. But he has the experience, and, perhaps, at 42, the right age.

Another lead name is BU alum Mike Sullivan, formerly head coach of the Boston Bruins. He didn’t take the amateur coaching route, like others did, but he had a long playing career, then went into coaching the AHL and quickly got the Bruins job, before losing it after a couple of years. This is akin to the route Ted Donato took at Harvard, although Donato had even less head coaching experience.

Which brings us to Sacco. Sacco also had a long playing career, a brief stint as an AHL head coach, and now the NHL.

BU may ultimately go with people who have stuck around the college game, which would keep Quinn at the forefront. But by being BU alums and NHL head coaches, Sullivan, and now Sacco, immediately thrust themselves into the discussion as well.

For all the concern about what could happen to Alabama-Huntsville in the near future, and for all the gloom and doom over its attempt to find room in the CCHA … the more it’s investigated, the more it might make sense.

However, this is only because of Nebraska-Omaha’s potential departure from the CCHA for the WCHA.

See, we’ve been part of the uproar here. We wrote recently that the WCHA’s open courting of Nebraska-Omaha, as a way of making Bemidji State’s WCHA entrance more palateable, was very unseemly. After all, if the WCHA was truly only trying to do what was best for college hockey as a whole — and bring in Bemidji State in order to save that program (with the impending dissolution of the CHA) — then how could it claim that while also robbing another conference of one of their teams? At best, it was a 50-50 proposition, from the big picture view of college hockey.

However, maybe not.

Huntsville’s longshot bid becomes a lot more intriguing vis-a-vis UNO, specifically. Huntsville has been labeled a longshot because of the distance from CCHA schools. In this economy especially, flying schools to Huntsville is an expense most schools don’t want.

When the discussion swirled around Bowling Green’s potential demise, replacing BGSU with Huntsville was a costly difference.

But in terms of UNO, there is no cost difference. And this is the huge key.

A check of Google Maps shows that the driving mileage distance from Detroit to Omaha, Nebraska, is 732 miles. The driving distance from Detroit to Huntsville, Alabama, is only 663 miles.

True, the airport situation may be trickier, but the end result may be no more expensive for CCHA teams.

So perhaps UNO to the WCHA, while a rough “see ya later” to the CCHA, may be the one scenario that is best for college hockey right now.  Let’s face it, everyone’s between a rock and a hard place, but at least there is some semblance of a solution that would benefit everyone, somewhat — and potentially save two programs.

Update: And, as UAH SID Jamie Gilliam points out, Huntsville was just named the top place to live!