Just a quick note for those of you who were intrigued in my July interview with Rival Films’ Matt Fults on the Boston University-Boston College documentary, The Battle of Comm Ave. A pre-sale of the DVD begins today and ends on October 9. During this time, you can get the Director’s Cut DVD for half price, with free shipping. The DVD will ship November 1st.

The made-for-TV version – minus the Director’s Cut’s 32 minutes of extra footage – will air several times on NESN in November.

Even if you despise both BU and BC, you can never go wrong with supporting mainstream media coverage of college hockey, especially when the DVD is the price of one beer at an arena.

Marblehead to Lynnfield, MA is a short distance geographically, but Marblehead native Cory Schnieder and Lynnfield’s Chris Higgins couldn’t be farther apart in their professional hockey careers this week.

For Higgins, the starting left wing for BU last year (and the LW in my most favorite line ever – Higgins, Wilson, Lawrence), Labor Day weekend will bring about his first NHL rookie camp with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Higgins, who is expected to spend the start of the season in Syracuse with the AHL Crunch, has the opportunity to be a part of a unique NHL training camp experience.

As Yahoo Sports’ Puck Daddy detailed on Wednesday, the Blue Jackets have made the beginning of their training camp a “fantasy tournament.” Owners of the franschise get to assemble their own teams for use in a two day tournament from the actual roster of the Blue Jackets training camp. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Higgins was selected by majority owner John P. McDonnell for his tournament team. Considering he had little buzz around him as he was about to enter BU in the summer of 2005, Higgins has made the best of every opportunity during his college hockey career, and it will be interesting to watch how he does in training camp.

For Cory Schneider, on the other hand, discouragement must be the primary feeling this week. Schneider, a goalie for the Vancouver Canucks, and the college hockey example of Bill Simmons’ Ewing Theory (“he’s so talented, he’s so wonderful, oh, BC will win it all this year…”, and then they finally win the national championship the year he leaves college early to go pro), is now the backup to a goaltender with a new 12 year long contract. Once goalie-extraordinaire Roberto Luongo signed an over-decade long contract this week with the Canucks, with the earliest escape clause being five years in according to the Canwest News Service, Schneider became somewhat dispensable.  Not that Schneider isn’t used to being thought of by dispensable by the Canucks organization – he was frustratingly name-dropped as trade bait nearly all last season.

The Canucks also enter training camp with Andrew Raycroft on the roster, leaving a real possibility that Schneider could be sent back to the AHL’s Manitoba Moose to start the season again. Schneider told the Salem News on Thursday that he’s not taking Luongo’s mega-deal as a death knell for his career in Vancouver. “It really doesn’t make a lot of difference as far as my situation goes; (Luongo) was still going to be here even if he hadn’t signed an extension,” said Schneider to the paper. “If you’re always striving just to be a backup goalie, you’ll never be a No. 1.”

Schneider’s lessons in hard work and humility might be needed by his former Eagles teammate, Buffalo Sabre and Portland Pirate Nathan Gerbe. According to an interview with HockeyBuzz.com, Gerbe thinks he has done all he can in the AHL, and is out for a full-time call up to the Buffalo Sabres. “I’m not going back there ( to Portland ). It’s not going to happen. I’ll play whatever position they want me to play. I’m not going down.”

As much as I root for the little guy, and as much as I like to see young players with determination, one might want to tell Gerbe that one season in the AHL doesn’t necessarily make one a full-time NHL forward. Especially when he spent a portion of the season injured, and was relatively quiet during the small amount of time he was called up to Buffalo. Gerbe may want to prepare to spend at least the first few weeks in Portland with the Pirates, given that there are a few centers ahead of him on the Sabres depth chart. And anyway, Portland’s not that bad of a city. Sure, it doesn’t have buffalo wings, but it still has Tim Hortons.

But then again, I’m a BU fan – I’m biased against Gerbe. Maybe he will crack the Sabres roster full-time….

For more hockey news, stay tuned later this weekend, as I kick off another regular series, one sure to rival my always popular, “Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” updates. Yes, it might have to do with Kane’s Donuts, Kowloon, the giant orange dinosaur, and the Hilltop Steakhouse (or the “Hilop Seakhos,” as its dying lightup catcus sign on Route 1 likes to call it.)  Stay tuned.

Well, this year, the partner-in-crime and I have decided to join a few colleagues of mine at tonight’s BU – BC matchup at Conte Forum, one of the few Hockey East arenas that I haven’t been to at this point.  Heaven help us.

Last night, both teams faced off at Agganis Arena on the BU campus for night one of the back-to-back. I think it was a good game.  It ended as a 1-1 tie, and both BU’s Kiran Milan and BC’s John Muse made absolutely amazing saves.  But besides that, I feel like both teams forgot how to skate.  In the second period, Eagles were falling all over the place, untouched, like the littlest of mites that play during intermissions.  As a Terriers fan, this was hysterical…until the third period, when it was the Terriers who were falling off their skates like five year olds. It wasn’t an epidemic, per se, but it happened enough times that it was noticeable.

A few other notes from the evening:

- I always get a kick out of the BC roster.  It is filled with mostly Irish or Italian names, aka “good Catholic names.”  Of course.

- Speaking of Irondequoit, I always feel a tinge of torn-ness when I root against BC, because over the past few years, their roster has been dominated by Western New Yorkers.  Chris Collins = Fairport, NY.  The Gionta boys = Greece, NY.  The Reasoners = Honeyoe Falls, NY. The Orpiks = East Amherst, NY.  I typically root for all things Western NY, but I just can’t when it comes to BC hockey.  Could it be that BC wins because they recruit Western New Yorkers?

- I think I am too used to seeing goalie extremes (way tall goalies like Ben Bishop, Carter Hutton, or way short goalies like Jeff Lerg), that when I saw BC’s John Muse up close for the first time last night (I’ve actually only seen him play once prior, and I couldn’t get a good look at him because I was in the balcony of the TDBanknorth Garden), he looked odd to me.  He’s not too short.  He’s not too tall.  He’s just in the middle.  He also has shoulders like a linebacker – his whole upper body is extremely broad, and it doesn’t seem to be just his padding.  Or maybe I’m just really used to seeing really small goalies?

- Another thing about Muse: he lets up ridiculously long rebounds, and leaves huge parts of the net open when he’s being pressured.  The teams that score on him must be the ones who pay attention after they make a shot on him.  BU did not do that last night.  They could have scored three more goals last night had they been paying attention to a rebound that went across the open part of the net.  And it wasn’t like the Terriers were being held up by the Eagles – no, they just weren’t paying attention.

- As I’m writing this, BC football is losing to Virgina Tech in the ACC Championship 30-10.  So not only am I walking into enemy territory tonight, the BC fans are going to be angry and depressed.  I don’t blame them – there was a ton of hype leading up to this afternoon’s game.  Maybe I won’t wear my jersey…

Oh wait.  Nathan Gerbe just got called up to the Buffalo Sabres.  Now the BC folks will be happy.  Okay, maybe I can safely wear my jersey.

What’s going to happen the first time Gerbe plays against Phil Kessel of the Boston Bruins?  I want to be there.  It’ll be a “2004-05 USA-Under-18 Development Team members who have made it to the NHL” matchup!  I want this to happen.  I want to be there to watch this.

Better yet, could we just reunite the two of them on the same NHL team?  Maybe including the FWNICM? Would that be too much to ask? The Bruins, maybe? Anyone who knows me personally knows that I spent the summer suggesting this lineup to every single hockey-knowledgeable person I know, including the brother of a actual factual NHL scout that my friends and I sat next to while watching Game 6 of the NBA Championships.

All I’m asking is that you think about it.  (And if you do, and decide that it would never work, just don’t tell me.  This is one thing I’d rather be blissfully ignorant about.)