Quebec City still waiting for its turn
If the NHL’s expansion ends with Seattle, is that the last hope for the return of the Nordiques?
QUEBEC CITY — The peculiar exterior of Videotron Centre invited a nickname, so some started calling it “the cake” for how layers of white metal surround it like frosting.
For one night only in September, it hosted an NHL game as it was always intended to. The Washington Capitals and Montreal Canadiens played an exhibition there, reminding locals of the team they used to have — and the one they still hope will come.
Three hours before that puck drop, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau took a short flight from Montreal to Quebec City on a private jet. He wanted to sell Quebec City as a hockey market in person, perhaps because, even with a ready arena and the media conglomerate as a willing owner in one of the most hockey-mad regions in the world, Quebec has tumbled down the NHL’s priority list for expansion.
Two years ago, Quebec City submitted an expansion application at the same time as Las Vegas. The NHL picked Las Vegas while deferring Quebec City’s bid. The league is preparing to expand again to Seattle with the new franchise expected to be formally approved in December.
Seattle will eventually give the NHL 32 teams with an equal balance between the Eastern and Western conferences. No North American professional sports league has more than 32 teams, and so it seems the NHL will stop expanding after it adds Seattle. Where does that leave Quebec City?
“It’s the $100-million question,” Péladeau said. “There’s not too many scenarios. It’s either a new franchise or a relocation. And in every scenario, we’re open for business.”
Relocating a team already in the Eastern Conference is Quebec City’s best hope — ironic considering the area lost the Nordiques when the club was moved to Denver in 1995, now the Colorado Avalanche franchise.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has insisted that he has no interest or designs on relocating a team, but in the Eastern Conference, there are some obvious candidates in the Carolina Hurricanes, Ottawa Senators and the Florida Panthers, who all struggle with attendance.
“At least (team owners) have several scenarios, which is interesting for them and interesting for what other cities in North America are able to provide to the league,” Péladeau said. “At the end of the day, if there is a location where you have a strong business plan and a passionate owner with financial means, you have more possibilities to win and to participate in the total wealth of the league instead of subsidizing continuously some pieces.
“There is a market, but the market’s not there. The arenas are not full. I’m not going to say they’re empty, but they’re far from being full.”
Bettman has sought to grow the league’s American fan base by expanding into non-traditional markets, like Las Vegas and now Seattle, and in keeping with that, Houston has shown some interest in landing a club. Quebec City would no doubt be passionate about a professional hockey team, but it’s not really a new base for the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens just a few hours away and many locals already rooting for them. When Bettman deferred Quebec City’s bid two years ago, he also referenced a “fluctuating Canadian dollar,” which is at 77 cents to the U.S. dollar.
At issue is also the market’s size. As of July 2016, the Quebec City metropolitan area had a population of roughly 800,000, which would make it the NHL’s smallest market.
“Quebec is challenged, OK, I’m going to put it nicely. They’re challenged,” Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs told reporters in May.
“Look at the income base and the population base and there probably isn’t a smaller market, so they’re going to really have to distinguish themselves in some other way, I would think.”
Considering Jacobs’s influence on the NHL Board of Governors, who vote on such matters, as the group’s chairman, the comments don’t inspire confidence in Quebec City’s NHL hopes.
Péladeau argues that the market is actually around 2.5 million people. That incorporates more of the eastern part of the province, which would assume people who live two hours away would be willing to make the trek to games.
Conveniently, Quebecor has the TVA Sports channel, the French-language broadcaster of the NHL, so Péladeau believes the broadcasting reach makes the market even larger.
Canadiens owner Geoff Molson has been publicly supportive of a second team in the province — though some whisper about how genuine that really is.
Péladeau believes a province with roughly eight million people can support two teams and a built-in rivalry between them would be good for everyone.
“If you have a team in Quebec City, the adversarial envi- ronment between Montreal and Quebec is something in itself that will sell tickets,” Péladeau said.
Videotron Centre is just three years old and seats more than 18,000 people, a middleof-the-pack capacity among NHL arenas.
“We’d like to be part of the show,” Péladeau said. “We’re fully optimistic that we have everything to succeed when our turn will come.”