The National Hockey League is scheduled to approved an expansion team for Las Vegas starting as early as with the 2017-2018 season. Quebec City was the only other city to submit an expansion bid in 2015.
Quebec City was required to submit a $10 million (U.S.) fee, $2 million of which is nonrefundable. The price of expansion admission is $500 million, which would be about $600 million Canadian at the moment.
Other than the lost $2 million (U.S.), Quebec City is not in a bad spot. Several NHL teams (Carolina, Phoenix, NY Islanders, Florida) are prime candidates for relocation. Getting an established team and saving $650 million Canadian is a much better deal.
Carolina moved up as a good relocation option after team owner Peter Karmanos was sued for more than $100 million by three of his sons after missing multiple payment deadlines on loans against a family trust. The Hurricanes have had low attendance figures for about a decade.
Moving an Eastern team is a bit easier, though a division switch might be in order. The Winnipeg Jets were trapped in the Southeast Division for 2 years after relocating to Canada.
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The imbalance in the west is definitely a factor with 14 teams in the west and 16 teams in the east. The obvious expansion solution was Seattle, but the city didn't participate in the expansion ritual.
With a year head start, a new Seattle franchise could use Key Arena until a new arena was built. The situation wouldn't have been any worse than the Barclay Center in Brooklyn and the team would draw more than the Arizona Coyotes. Plus, the Vancouver Canucks would finally have a regional rival.
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When the NHL Executive Committee voted unanimously to recommend expansion to Las Vegas, the writing had been on the wall for awhile.
We had a sense of pessimism from Quebecor chairman of the board and former prime minister Brian Mulroney. "Eventually, we will have a team in Quebec, I think, but it will not be for tomorrow," Mulroney told La Presse (translated). Mulroney had pointed out the huge difference between an American expansion owner paying $500 million and Quebecor shelling out "650 and 750 million [Canadian]."
Quebec City is better off with a relocated team. Having an established team means winning faster, though the Jets have mostly struggled in Winnipeg. An expansion team means more short-term suffering. Quebec City might be a destination for certain players and that will be easier with an established team.
As much as Carolina would be a good move, the Florida Panthers make more sense.
Quebec City has been ready with an arena for a year. Unlike Montréal for MLB and Halifax for the CFL, having a stadium is not a problem in Quebec City.
The Montréal Canadiens downed the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-1 before a sellout crowd of 18,259 on September 28 in the first NHL game of any kind in the Videotron Centre. Les Habs will host Boston at the Videotron Centre on October 4. The Canadiens have played preseason hockey in Quebec City every year since 2009.
The passion for Les Nordiques got noticed by The Wall Street Journal. The people who attend other NHL games are loud and proud but are only a small percentage of fans that would support a NHL team in Quebec City.
Let's not forget the biggest Quebec Nordiques fan in the United States: Homer J. Simpson. The Simpsons dropped a Nordiques reference in 2014 as Homer reached the end of scary story about the Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche. In March of this year, Homer was watching the NHL Draft and there was a Cédric Bélanger reference. Exeter, Ontario native Tim Long is a Simpsons writer. Long had talked to Bélanger, an arts reporter for Le Journal de Quebec after the 2014 reference.
"We had a little thing where Homer was obsessed with the fact that the Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado and became the Avalanche," Long told CBC's Quebec AM. "For some reason that we never established, he took it very hard. He's one of many people who would like to see an NHL team back in Quebec City."
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One major difference since we last spoke of Les Nordiques is that Pierre Karl Péladeau is out of politics. On May 2, Péladeau resigned as the Leader of the Opposition for the Parti Québécois in the Quebec National Assembly and as MNA for Saint-Jérôme. Péladeau is back in control of Quebecor. The separatist element likely wasn't an issue for the NHL but that is off the table.
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The CFL is one of the few leagues to have a professional team in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Posse went 5-13 in the CFL in 1994 and was considered to be the worst off of the American teams.
The Posse lived through a number of oddities. Tamarick Vanover signaled for a fair catch against the B.C. Lions; the Lions recovered the ball for a touchdown. In the home opener, O Canada sounded more like O Christmas Tree. Ticket prices were reduced to $9 later in the season.
The Posse averaged 8,953, including 2,350 for what turned out to be the last CFL game in the city against Winnipeg. The final home game against Edmonton was moved to Commonwealth Stadium.
The most famous Posse alumni was Anthony Calvillo. The #1 quarterback in all-time yardage went first in the dispersal draft to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
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If/when a NHL team comes back to Quebec City, the English-language rights will be a significant concern, especially since the media landscape has changed since the Nordiques left in 1995.
The Quebec Nordiques would almost certainly be on TVA Sports, given that Quebecor would likely own the team and owns TVA. There will be plenty of French language radio stations that would love to carry the team.
English-language rights run into problems with access and the ability to make money. The anglophone population in Quebec City is very small. Here are some possibilities:
- Rogers Sportsnet runs alternative feeds for Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton but not for Montréal. This is why some Canadiens games end up CJNT/62 out of Montréal. The solution for those conflicts and for Nordiques games is to create a Montréal subchannel. Some Nordiques games could get bumped up to the regular channel on nights where the Habs are not playing. Cable and satellite companies would want to carry that channel, such as they do out west.
- TSN5 and Rogers Sportsnet East could split the games though that would lead to some missed games, a lot of tape-delayed coverage, and confusion over which channel was airing the game.
- A brand new sports channel could be created, perhaps with a Maritimes emphasis to justify its existence beyond 82 Quebec Nordiques games.
- Local television can't come to the rescue. English-language media outlets in Quebec City have traditionally struggled, which is why English-language station feeds in Quebec City come from Montréal.
Production costs are a major concern. I abhor the idea of announcers calling games off a monitor in a studio, but that is an option. That audio could double as a English language radio feed. The Nordiques would have the same territory as the Ottawa Senators and the Montréal Canadiens, so costs could be borne by potential Nordiques fans in the Maritimes. Some of that population is bilingual or primarily French speaking, and might be more inclined to watch in French on TVA Sports.
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logo credit: Quebec Nordiques/NHL
photo credit: Steve Simon/The Gazette
video credit: The Simpsons/Fox
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