The face of minor league hockey may be undergoing a substantial change in the next year or two.

"In not too long," says Roy Boe, who is in charge of the American Hockey League's new Bridgeport, Conn., franchise and who also is president of the Worcester IceCats, "I see there being just one Triple-A hockey league, and it will be the American Hockey League." The cold war between the AHL and the International Hockey League has shown signs of thawing this summer, with reports that the IHL was looking to merge with the AHL. The two league CEOs, Dave Andrews of the "A" and Doug Moss of the "I", have opened the lines of communication, at the very least.

Andrews has emphatically said his league is not merging with the IHL, though.

The main topics of conversation seem simply to be an overview of what is happening in hockey's highest-level minors.

"I wouldn't know how to even begin to do a merger," said Moss, but he can see some common ground. One suggestion he has is for a joint All-Star Game between the leagues, or perhaps even two such games. And interlocking schedules have been tried in years past, with the AHL and old Western Hockey League playing a few games a year against each other in the 1960s.

The detente is overdue.

The IHL has been consistently losing franchises in recent seasons. In 1997-98, it had 18 franchises. Since the end of the 1999-2000 season, both Michigan and Long Beach have dropped out, leaving the "I" with 11 teams, and reports out of Cincinnati have the Cyclones struggling financially in their battle with the AHL Mighty Ducks. The shrinkage of the IHL is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as the league recovers from a series of mistakes made during the turbulent mid-'90s under Bob Ufer.

Of those 11 existing teams, only three are independent.

"It just makes too much sense to have one Triple-A league," said Kansas City Blades GM Doug Soetaert. "It can stay as the IHL, and AHL, and maybe have playoffs at the end of the season, but work under one collective bargaining agreement, one set of rules, 30 NHL teams and 30 affiliates, with everybody in it for the same things, to develop players and referees and coaches for the NHL."

One scenario for the future, as envisioned by Boe, has Orlando and Houston of the IHL eventually leaving in an NHL expansion. The AHL could absorb some IHL teams in a Western Division. Cleveland was a long-time member of the AHL until the World Hockey Association was formed. Detroit, Chicago, Grand Rapids and Milwaukee also seem like reasonable geographic fits. Kansas City and Winnipeg are reasonable with Salt Lake City being Triple-A hockey's version of Hawaii.

While the IHL has been shrinking, the AHL has expanded steadily. Norfolk joins the AHL this season to make it a 20-team league. Bridgeport -- the Islanders signed a five-year affiliation agreement with the franchise Wednesday -- and Manchester, N.H., are on the books for next season. That will give the "A" 22 teams. The league has been pointing toward a 24-club setup for several years, and has two suspended franchises still on the books. They are Detroit's, which vacated Adirondack, and Ottawa's PEI Senators franchise.

This coming season, there will be 30 NHL teams and 31 teams in the AHL and IHL combined. If the AHL caps at 24, that will leave six NHL teams without their own affiliates.

Boe's view of Triple-A hockey's future as being called the American Hockey League is not shared by everyone in the AHL.

"I compare our business to the Internet," Kentucky Thoroughblades president Ron DeGregorio said. "We know it is going to be successful, but what we don't know is exactly what it will look like in 10 years." DeGregorio isn't so sure that the AHL and IHL can't co-exist successfully. "Baseball has two Triple-A leagues, and that works well," he said.

For much of the '90s, the IHL was mostly an independent league. NHL expansion has helped change that. The AHL simply does not have enough active franchises to supply an affiliate for every NHL club. The IHL put a salary cap in place to reduce the amount of money spent on veteran players, but travel expenses remain a problem.

"The challenge we face," says Springfield Falcons owner Bruce Landon, "is the same challenge every owner in minor-league hockey faces, and that's finding a way to control costs. This year coming up, we've got two more plane trips than last year, and that's $25,000 more right there."

For AHL teams, plane trips are a rarity. For IHL teams, they are a regular part of the schedule.

Throughout the high minors, sentiment is strong for some sort of standardization, if not merger. Baseball, which is the only other major sport with a farm system, has a very detailed agreement with minor league baseball. Every big league team has at least five affiliates up and down the ladder, and player costs are the same for each owner at a particular level.

In hockey, each affiliation is negotiated separately and costs vary dramatically from agreement to agreement. Each franchise has its own approach to what sort of product is put on the ice. In the AHL, some teams dress as many veterans as possible -- the limit is six players with more than 240 games of high-level experience at the start of a season -- and some teams have only one or two veterans.

In recent seasons, the Calder Cup has been won by mostly veteran teams. This year's winner, the Hartford Wolf Pack, was one of the most experienced AHL teams in memory. Hartford's budget reflected that, with veteran defenseman Terry Virtue getting $150,000 on a minor-league contract. That's the kind of salary IHL teams have been trying to get away from.

"I'm not advocating a merger," Worcester general manager John Ferguson Jr. said. "But I think moving toward uniformity at this level is a good idea. And not so much uniformity from a financial standpoint necessarily, but from a player development standpoint."

The leagues have a lot to gain by ending their cold war. The health of hockey's minors has always been fragile. The boom of the 1960s turned into the crash of the '70s, and it took years for the sport to recover.

"The whole world is going after strategic alliances and partnerships," Moss said. "Why should we be different? What we're trying to do is be creative, to find ways to better our leagues."

Merger mania was kicked off last month with stories that had Utah Grizzlies GM Bob Bourne mentioning the "M" word. Bourne declined to comment for this story, saying that his earlier candor got him in trouble.

Merger? Detente? Cooperation? Will it happen?

It may be too soon to characterize this summer thaw as anything except communication, and while the AHL and IHL are hardly the identical twins of Triple-A hockey, at least it's now safe to invite them to the same party.

Bill Ballou covers professional hockey and baseball for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass.