Patrick Roy is back from Denver, but what about the Nordiques?
Patrick Roy is returning to the Quebec Remparts as coach and general manager of the team the NHL Hall of Fame goaltending legend took to the Memorial Cup junior hockey championship in 2006.
The 52-year-old quadruple Stanley Cup winner said at last week’s press conference to announce the second coming of “Saint Patrick” that he “followed his heart” in making the decision two years after he left his post of coach and GM of the Colorado Avalanche.
Roy’s homecoming undoubtedly comes as joyous tidings for Quebecor, the communications colossus that in 2014 bought the Remparts from an ownership group that included Roy. Ticket sales have been flagging for Remparts games in recent years, in part because of the team’s sputtering performance on the ice, advancing beyond the first playoff round only once since Roy left for Denver five years ago.
Roy’s Quebec City to Colorado trajectory, and now his return, underscores a greater concern for Quebecor - which has the management deal for the Videotron Centre - as well as the hockeymad citizens of this wintry corner of the continent. As folks witness the unbelievable inaugural season success of a bunch of discards known as the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the most recent National Hockey League expansion franchise, surely they must wonder wistfully, when might big league hockey return to the capitale nationale?
It is now 28 years and counting since, following a heartbreaking first round playoff loss to the New York Rangers, owners of the Quebec Nordiques (where are you now, Marcel Aubut?) announced the $75 million sale of the team to a communications company in Colorado. That team would scoop a disgruntled Patrick Roy from the Montreal Canadiens and win a Stanley Cup in its first year, a professional sports league achievement the Golden Knights have in their grasp.
Las Vegas owners had to ante up $500 million to join the NHL, not to mention build a league-worthy arena. The reported franchise fee for a Seattle team, which could be announced in the next few months, though Commissioner Gary Bettman is being his usual inscrutable self, could be in the neighbourhood of at least $700 million.
Converted into Canadian dollars, the entry fee for a potential Quebec City franchise could be well over $900 million Cdn, or roughly twice the profit Quebecor made in 2017. The company, when it submitted its application for a franchise three years ago, now officially “deferred,” made it clear it would want and need partners to float the bloated fee. Whether the NHL would actually set the bar that high to bring an already marginal market back into the league fold is another question.
One gets the sense that those who pine for a return of NHL hockey to Quebec City have settled in, stoically, for a long, and possibly vain vigil.
The city has obediently met the critical first condition of rejoining the NHL by building a modern facility that meets and exceeds league standards.
So the Videotron Centre (or Centre Vide-o-tron for the cruel critics) waits while forces beyond the city’s control determine the future of an NHL franchise. There is no optimistic scenario for the return of the Nordiques in the near future, especially given the league’s priority is to even up the imbalance in the western conference, where there are only 15 teams to the 16 in the east.
The best hope for Quebec, observers say, is for the relocation of a failing eastern franchise and the best hope there is for Florida and Caroline attendance numbers to continue to sink and ownership doubts rise. Although it’s unlikely to happen soon, Quebec fans can take some comfort in the rapidity with which the Atlanta Thrashers were repurposed in 2011 as the Jets in Winnipeg, a comparable hockey market to Quebec City.
In the meantime, Quebec City fans can fantasize a bit, seeing a homeboy NHL great behind the bench in the city’s Nhl-quality arena. Now, should an NHL team return to la vieille capitale in the foreseeable future, who might be the obvious choice to make his return to coaching a big league team?