QUEBEC CITY — Early Monday morning, Ottawa Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot made the 45-minute drive from Quebec City to his hometown in Sainte-Marie de Beauce, accompanied by several teammates. He couldn’t return to the area without visiting his old elementary school, École Monseigneur-Feuiltault.
“This is where I grew up, this is where I came to school for many years,” Chabot said. “This is where my dad was teaching for years and years. It means a lot. It’s home. There’s no place like home.”
But the trip also served a broader purpose. When hundreds of cheering children gathered in the school gym to greet Chabot and his teammates, only one wore an Ottawa jersey — a black-and-red No. 7 Brady Tkachuk. In delivering Senators-branded floorball sticks and player autographs as parting gifts, the team was reinforcing its aim to establish a bigger presence in its neighboring province and convert a new generation of fans.
On Tuesday, Chabot and the Sens will play the second of two preseason games at the Videotron Centre in Quebec City, facing the Montreal Canadiens after beating the New Jersey Devils there over the weekend. Chabot, who requested to skate in both exhibitions, secured up to 70 tickets per game for his family, including his father, François, who grew up a massive Nordiques fan.
“Never expected to have the chance to play in my hometown, or at least close to it,” Chabot said.
Like many of the kids seeking his autograph Monday, however, Chabot is too young to have built any real attachment to the Nordiques before the franchise left for Denver in May 1995 and became the Colorado Avalanche. Thirty years later, a love of hockey remains strong in Quebec City, with local sports stores still carrying Nordiques jerseys. But in lieu of an actual team, the city is full of older fans clinging to bygone stories, younger fans finding other rooting interests and an NHL-ready arena that just celebrated its 10th birthday in September with no NHL tenant.
The league did not respond to a request from The Athletic asking whether it’s discussed the possibility of bringing a team back to Quebec City. In the meantime, the eyes of NHL owners have strayed south of the border, where a handful of American markets have reportedly expressed interest in forking over expansion fees that could one day eclipse $2 billion. Ex-player and current TNT broadcaster Anson Carter leads a group hoping to bring a team back to Atlanta, a city with two NHL franchises in its history. Billionaire Dan Friedkin was identified earlier this year as a “strong candidate” to bring an NHL team to Houston. Elsewhere, representatives from Indianapolis, Austin, and New Orleans have all reportedly met with the NHL over expansion possibilities.
As these potential franchisees line up to meet with commissioner Gary Bettman, Quebec City fans like 36-year-old Jonathan Picard are left disappointed.
“It’s a sad reality that (QC) doesn’t get as much consideration,” Picard said. “But I understand why. There’s bigger (markets), they want to expand in the United States to have new fans. I know that is what is going to push with the top people at the league.
“But it hurts that, I find, they ignore Quebec.”
Despite attempts, no NHL franchise has made the city its home since the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado in 1995. (David Kirouac / Icon Sportswire)
It’s not as though Quebec City officials haven’t tried to bring hockey back. But they’ve been burned before.
In 2009, then-mayor Régis Labeaume spoke to Bettman about a possible NHL return. Bettman said he’d consider the city if they got a new arena and a team was for sale. Three years later, construction began on the nearly CAD$400 million Videotron Centre, with costs split between the city and province. By 2015, the telecommunications company Québecor — headed by politician Pierre-Karl Péladeau — applied for an expansion franchise. That same year, Nordiques fans rallied for the cause in the city’s historic Plaines D’Abraham, dubbing their gathering “La marche bleue.”
But the NHL eventually turned down the Quebec City bid due to a falling Canadian dollar, instead placing a franchise in Las Vegas.
Now Quebec City seems destined to forever be the bridesmaid for potential NHL expansion or relocation, an afterthought once again when the Arizona Coyotes moved to Utah in 2024; adding even more competition to the field, a committee was formed earlier this year with the hopes of returning hockey to Arizona. Meanwhile, preseason exhibitions are the closest thing to an NHL game that the city has hosted in decades (though a PWHL regular-season game in January between the Montreal Victoire and the Ottawa Charge was staged in front of a sold-out crowd). And even these haven’t been universally embraced.
Last year, the Quebec City government was criticized for paying millions in public funds to bring the Los Angeles Kings to town for a pair of preseason games at the Videotron Centre. Citizens protested the use of the government subsidies, which went toward compensating the Kings and their opponents — the Florida Panthers and the Boston Bruins — for travel, accommodations and other financial losses. Despite the scorn, over 30,000 combined tickets were sold for the games; the Videotron Centre has a capacity crowd of just over 18,250.
“The passion is next to none,” NHL agent Pat Brisson said. “A lot of passionate fans, hockey fans, probably per capita, more than anywhere else on the planet. They would live and die by their team. The question that I would have is just the economics.”
Indeed, the economics of an NHL return aren’t glowing. According to the Canadian census of 2021, Quebec City has a population of 549,459. If you account for surrounding municipalities, the region stretches to over 810,000. Even so, it trails that of the Winnipeg metropolitan area, which is projected to have over 950,000 citizens this year. Winnipeg regained an NHL team in 2011 after its original franchise relocated to Phoenix in 1996, but it has the smallest population of any city in the league and has faced its own attendance issues.
More importantly, the region’s population trails that of Houston and Atlanta, whose metropolitan areas rank among the top 10 U.S. cities by population, making them ripe for potential expansion and pushing Quebec City further down their wish list.
It all adds up to plenty of reasons for skepticism that the NHL will ever return. But the idea still has supporters around the league, including in the Senators’ locker room. Chabot may not feel a connection to the Nordiques, but older players like David Perron do.
“Quebec hockey fans have always been diehard hockey fans,” said Perron, who hails from Sherbrooke, east of Montreal. “Even me, growing up, I remember the first NHL video games that came out. ‘NHL 94,’ ‘NHL 95,’ I was six or seven years old, playing with the Nordiques.”
51-year-old Sean Marcoux grew up a fan of the Nordiques but has since become a fan of the Colorado Avalanche. (Courtesy of Sean Marcoux)
The day before their first preseason game, the Senators held an autograph signing and volunteered at a local food bank. It was a chance for Senators fans to meet their heroes who live nearly five hours west. Some, like Chabot’s father, have traded their jerseys for Ottawa ones. But in a market where the Canadiens rule, more work is needed to sway local interest.
“You can’t flip channels without having the good old (Canadiens logo on) a screen,” Nordiques fan Richard Hamel said.
In announcing their two preseason games, owner Michael Andlauer said in January that Quebec City “deserves, in my opinion, an NHL team.” Even if the gesture was at least partly meant to widen the team’s Francophone imprint, Sens fans in Ottawa didn’t take it well; to them, Andlauer was evoking memories of relocation threats issued under Andlauer’s predecessor, Eugene Melnyk. And the controversy only grew when the team’s mascot, Spartacat, attended a press conference in a half-Senators/half-Nordiques jersey, leading to an official apology from the organization.
“The way I looked at it,” Chabot said. “It was always, you go to your friend’s house that’s French, you’re going to bring them some French wine or give them a French soccer jersey or something. That’s kind of what Sparty, in my book, did. It was for the Nordiques and the people.”
The Senators intend to broaden their footprint in Quebec. But the reality is they won’t convert everyone.
“There are so many Nordiques fans who decided to switch to rival teams of the Canadiens,” said Picard, who now cheers for the Colorado Avalanche. “A reason why the Nordiques were so loved was because they weren’t the Canadiens. They switched over to Boston or Toronto more than Ottawa or the Avalanche.”
And some have fallen out of love with the sport entirely. Members of Nordiques Nation, a fan group advocating for the team to return, used to travel to random NHL games to bring awareness to their cause. Those events, according to 51-year-old diehard Sean Marcoux, have died down.
“It’s very hard to find fans that still watch hockey,” Marcoux said. “And a lot of them say, ‘I used to (root) for the Nordiques, but I don’t watch anymore. When they left, I was done.’ They’re resentful.”
Unless good fortune comes its way, preseason games might be as close as Quebec City gets to NHL games. No franchises are seemingly in danger of relocating, but its best bet might be to hope that trouble arises in another city. With regards to expansion, the rising entrance fees mean fans would have to hope for a deep-pocketed prospective owner to simply put Quebec City in contention. Even then, it takes more than just money and facilities to stand out.
“That’s not my decision,” Chabot said. “Do I think it’d be great? Yes. I mean, I grew up there. And thinking of the way I grew up, going to junior games and watching them. So, for the kids back home, to be able to watch NHL games on a regular basis would be great, for sure.
“The population’s there. There’s a lot of people there. The love for the game. So I wouldn’t see why not. The rink is there. The setup is built for a hockey team to go there. But who knows? We’ll see in the next couple of years, I guess.”
Added Brisson, “Being French Canadian, first and foremost, I’m definitely in favor of it.”
Until then, fans are left to wonder and wait — while trying not to get their hopes up too much.
“I do,” Marcoux said, when asked if he still holds onto the belief that Quebec City can one day have an NHL team again. “I’m just sick of hearing about it.”
(Top photo: Jacques Boissinot / The Canadian Press via AP)