As these potential franchisees line up to meet with commissioner Gary Bettman, Quebec City fans like 36-year-old Jonathan Picard are left disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad reality that (QC) doesn\u2019t get as much consideration,\u201d Picard said. \u201cBut I understand why. There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it hurts that, I find, they ignore Quebec.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Despite attempts, no NHL franchise has made the city its home since the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado in 1995. (David Kirouac \/ Icon Sportswire)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as though Quebec City officials haven\u2019t tried to bring hockey back. But they\u2019ve been burned before.<\/p>\n
In 2009, then-mayor R\u00e9gis Labeaume spoke to Bettman about a possible NHL return. Bettman said he\u2019d 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 Qu\u00e9becor \u2014 headed by politician Pierre-Karl P\u00e9ladeau \u2014 applied for an expansion franchise. That same year, Nordiques fans rallied for the cause in the city\u2019s historic Plaines D\u2019Abraham,<\/a> dubbing their gathering \u201cLa marche bleue.\u201d<\/p>\n But the NHL eventually turned down the Quebec City bid due to a falling Canadian dollar, instead placing a franchise in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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\u2019t been universally embraced.<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 the Florida Panthers and the Boston Bruins \u2014 for travel, accommodations and other financial losses. Despite the scorn, over 30,000 combined tickets were sold for the games<\/a>; the Videotron Centre has a capacity crowd of just over 18,250.<\/p>\n \u201cThe passion is next to none,\u201d NHL agent Pat Brisson said. \u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the economics of an NHL return aren\u2019t glowing. According to the Canadian census of 2021<\/a>, Quebec City has a population of 549,459. If you account for surrounding municipalities, the region stretches to over 810,000<\/a>. Even so, it trails that of the Winnipeg metropolitan area, which is projected to have over 950,000 citizens this year<\/a>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n More importantly, the region\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 locker room. Chabot may not feel a connection to the Nordiques, but older players like David Perron do.<\/p>\n \u201cQuebec hockey fans have always been diehard hockey fans,\u201d said Perron, who hails from Sherbrooke, east of Montreal. \u201cEven me, growing up, I remember the first NHL video games that came out. \u2018NHL 94,\u2019 \u2018NHL 95,\u2019 I was six or seven years old, playing with the Nordiques.\u201d<\/p>\n \n 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)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s father, have traded their jerseys for Ottawa ones. But in a market where the Canadiens rule, more work is needed to sway local interest.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t flip channels without having the good old (Canadiens logo on) a screen,\u201d Nordiques fan Richard Hamel said.<\/p>\n In announcing their two preseason games, owner Michael Andlauer said in January that Quebec City \u201cdeserves, in my opinion, an NHL team.\u201d Even if the gesture was at least partly meant to widen the team\u2019s Francophone imprint, Sens fans in Ottawa didn\u2019t take it well; to them, Andlauer was evoking memories of relocation threats issued under Andlauer\u2019s predecessor, Eugene Melnyk. And the controversy only grew when the team\u2019s mascot, Spartacat, attended a press conference in a half-Senators\/half-Nordiques jersey, leading to an official apology from the organization.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way I looked at it,\u201d Chabot said. \u201cIt was always, you go to your friend\u2019s house that\u2019s French, you\u2019re going to bring them some French wine or give them a French soccer jersey or something. That\u2019s kind of what Sparty, in my book, did. It was for the Nordiques and the people.\u201d<\/p>\n The Senators intend to broaden their footprint in Quebec. But the reality is they won\u2019t convert everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many Nordiques fans who decided to switch to rival teams of the Canadiens,\u201d said Picard, who now cheers for the Colorado Avalanche. \u201cA reason why the Nordiques were so loved was because they weren\u2019t the Canadiens. They switched over to Boston or Toronto more than Ottawa or the Avalanche.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BF25C5B9-9244-4511-9AA7-019B7D3BBB59-scaled.jpg\")
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