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FAIRBANKS — Northeastern University hockey head coach Greg Cronin wasn’t familiar with the Alaska Nanooks on Tuesday.

It’s understandable because their tournament and regular season-opening matchup at 5:05 p.m. Friday in the Kendall Classic at Sullivan Arena in Anchorage is the first game between the teams in 20 years.

“I can’t comment because I don’t know about their team,” Cronin said Tuesday morning from Boston. “I’m so focused on getting my own team prepared to show up that I haven’t consistently broken down (video of) Fairbanks. But I will be learning about them through the Internet, and I’ll know a lot more about them on Friday when we play them.”

It’s an all-Huskies weekend in Anchorage for the Nanooks of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. Alaska ends the tournament against Connecticut with a 4:05 p.m. contest on Saturday.

The tournament host Alaska Anchorage Seawolves face Connecticut at 7:35 p.m. Friday and take on Northeastern at the same Saturday.

The Nanooks and Northeastern have met only one other time, a 7-6 victory for the Huskies on Jan. 3, 1988, in Boston. Back then, Cronin was an assistant coach for Colby College, an NCAA Division III program in Waterville, Maine, and Nanooks head coach Dallas Ferguson was a high school sophomore in Wainwright, Alberta.

Ferguson does know that Northeastern’s 2008-09 squad was picked in the recent Hockey East preseason poll to finish fourth this season and that its 10-team conference includes Boston College, the defending Division I national champion.

“With Northeastern, I anticipate a team that plays hard and gets up and down the rink good,” Ferguson said Tuesday afternoon before a video session with his team. “Hockey East is a great conference, and I’m really excited to play them. I think it’s going to be a good benchmark for us.

“This will be a good challenge for our program and our guys this early in the year. We’re fortunate to be able to be a part of this tournament.”

The Nanooks, for a few reasons, are more familiar with the Huskies who call Storrs, Conn., home.

UConn, ranked eighth among 10 teams in the Atlantic Hockey Association preseason poll, have played each other four times, with the Nanooks winning three games. The teams last met Jan. 14-15, 1986, at the Patty Center, with the Nanooks winning 13-7 and 12-2, respectively.

First-year Nanooks assistant coach Brian Meisner held the same position last season for UConn. Meisner’s responsibilities in his only stint there were recruiting, preparing practices and running drills and systems.

UConn was Meisner’s first D-I coaching job after he had spent 10 seasons as a coach and general manager in junior hockey.

“It was a great opportunity for me to coach at the Division I level,” Meisner said after Tuesday’s practice, “and what was great about coach Marshall is he gives you a lot of freedom and his assistants do a lot of things. So in that sense, I felt like I was a big part of the team. ... It helped me a lot when I came here.”

Bruce Marshall, who has been Connecticut’s head coach since it started as a D-III program 20 seasons ago, said he was fortunate to have the former junior hockey coach and administrator on his staff.

“He was exposed to different coaches and different philosophies, and for me as a head coach, you’re never set in your ways. You want to learn from what other people have seen out there,’’ Marshall said Tuesday from Storrs. “It’s nice to have people come in and have an impact on your program. He had a positive attitude, he was very encouraging to our players and he presented the game well.’’

Meisner won’t be reuniting with UConn this weekend because he’ll be on a recruiting trip for Alaska in British Columbia.

“When I first saw the schedule, I thought that it was going to be unbelievable,” Meisner said of his new team playing his old team Saturday in Anchorage. “I know some of their players, and some of them have called me and said they want to beat us pretty bad.

“I think it’s going to be awesome that they’re playing each other right away. There were 15 freshmen on that team last year and I think they learned a lot from us and I think we learned a little bit from them. It was a great experience.’’

Alaska has played two exhibition games in the last two weeks, while Northeastern and UConn only started practices last Saturday, which didn’t allow either squad time for any preseason games.

The Nanooks went 2-0 in the non-counting games with a 4-0 win over the U.S. National Team Development Program Under-18 Team on Sept. 27 at the Patty Center and last Friday’s 3-2 victory over the University of British Columbia at the Carlson Center.

The two exhibitions benefited an Alaska squad with a CCHA-high 12 freshmen among its 26 players.

By the time the Nanooks open conference play against Bowling Green on Oct. 24-25 at the Carlson Center, they will have played six times — the preseason contests, two games in the Kendall Classic and against Mercyhurst and Maine next week in the inaugural Brice Alaska Goal Rush at the Carlson Center.

“When they’ve (freshmen) got those (exhibition) games under their belts, there’s no anxiety when they play their first college game,” Ferguson said. “Once the season gets going, the more games they have under their belts, the more familiar they’ll get with the pace of play and stuff like that.”

While Ferguson is grateful for the two exhibition games, he isn’t using them as an advantage for the Kendall Classic.

“I think it’s important that we control what we can control,” he said, “and just because a team has only a couple of practices under their belts doesn’t mean they’re not going to be prepared and they’re not going to be hungry.”

Particularly veteran-rich teams like Northeastern and UConn.

Northeastern has 20 returners, including its top five scorers from last season’s 16-18-3 overall and 12-13-2 Hockey East finish. Forward Joe Vitale, now a senior, led the Huskies in 2007-08 with 12 goals and 23 assists for 35 points in 37 games.

UConn has 21 players back from a squad which finished 13-21-3 overall and 11-14-3 in Atlantic Hockey. Marshall has also his top five scorers returning from last season, paced by forward Andrew Olson, who as a freshman, provided a 14-10-24 scoring line in 2007-08.

Nanooks senior goaltender Chad Johnson said Northeastern and UConn will be excited to hit the Olympic-size ice of Sullivan Arena despite only a week of practice and no preseason games.

“They’re playing their first games, and with so many returning players, there’s going to be that experience, obviously, and they’re going to have a little bit of jump, too,” he said. “There will probably be a lot of energy for them, and a lot of freshmen are playing their first real game against Division I competition. So, it’s going to be pretty exciting once it all gets started.”