Quebec City Should Get The Next NHL Expansion Team
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is keen to expand the NHL to new cities. (He’s also keen on lockouts but that’s another story for another time.) After all the discussion over which cities would be applying to join the NHL family, only two cities put down the ten million dollar (two million non-refundable) deposit to signal they want to be part of the NHL’s expansion.
Those two cities are Las Vegas and Quebec City.
The last few months have been about Las Vegas and how more hockey in the desert is a good thing. Gary Bettman loves hockey in the desert, and will likely do all he can to push for hockey in a city where the temperatures easily hit 110 degrees. That’s Bettman logic for you.
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Realistically, Quebec City makes an awful lot of sense. Here’s why Quebec City should be given the nod over Las Vegas.
1.) It’s not hockey in the desert. The Arizona Coyotes are still losing money. Las Vegas is all about ‘new and now’. As soon as the novelty wears off, the Vegas fan base will become fickle as the ‘newest thing’ emerges in Sin City. The last thing the league needs is to have another team with low or mediocre attendance just a few years after being given a franchise.
Gary Bettman (for whatever reason) loves hockey in the desert. It isn’t working now, and no matter how much money you throw at the problem, it’s not going to start working. The NHL and the Coyotes owners have lost nearly half a billion dollars to keep that ‘noble experiment’ afloat. The last thing the league needs is to pick up the check for another glaring miscalculation.
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2.)
Canada should have another team in the NHL
. It’s their national sport, and there should be more ‘hometown’ clubs for Canadians. Canada is underrepresented in this league, and this would be a positive step forward. The province of Quebec alone has a fan base that could support a league, much less another home town team.
3.) It’s the Nordiques. As a Bruins fan, it will be great to have another fan base that is as passionate in their loathing of Montreal. The Nordiques had a special level of distaste for Montreal and it showed in a lot of their match ups. (Nothing like a brawl where a hockey game breaks out in the middle of it.)
4.) They have the fans necessary to have a successful franchise. Vegas got a lot of promises from businesses and organizations for season tickets. Sure, having the big money is certainly a boon to those proponents of a team in Sin City.
Quebec City would get the lion’s share of their season ticket holders from every day people. This is a fan base that is passionate, articulate, and has a pure love of the sport. Twenty years later, you will still see Nordiques jerseys worn at Bruins games (especially when the B’s take on the Colorado Avalanche.) Even generic NHL fans would rather see a team in an old city than a new one.
5.) Quebec has a stadium ready to go. Quebec City has the Videotron Centre built and ready to go. (The Las Vegas group won’t have their stadium built for months, and their ownership isn’t entirely sure they’ll be up and running for the 2017-18 season.) The Videotron Center is currently the home of the QMJHL’s Quebec Ramparts. When they built the Centre, it was with the desire to acquire a NHL team.
Nostalgia, history, and a motivated fan base helped bring back the Winnipeg Jets. Those same qualities should bring back the Quebec Nordiques.