03/27/25
July 09, 2010
Part 5: Why Not Quebec City? : As the Quebec Nordiques struggled financially in the early 1990s, then-Premier Jacques Parizeau asked team president Marcel Aubut for best- and worst-case scenarios. �I remember for the worst, we showed him something that [was so dire] we were laughing,� Aubut said. �We said that would never happen.� But the situation deteriorated beyond the worst case, Aubut said, insisting still today that the sale to Denver-based ownership for $75-million (U.S.) was the only recourse. Fifteen years later, Aubut and others in Quebec City are trying to bring the NHL back to the city. They point to the NHL�s salary cap and the consistent strength of the Canadian dollar as positive differences between now and then. And the province�s capital offers comparative political stability, the country�s lowest unemployment rate, a growing private-business sector, and a ferocious appetite for hockey.
posted by tommytrump to hockey at 09:45 AM - 1 comment
Quebec City would be a very small market for the NHL and a lot of people will likely pooh-pooh the idea because of that fact - but regardless, Quebec is a really special city with an amazing level of civic pride (fuelled partly by the fact that Montreal is so dominant within the province) and an almost fanatical devotion to the *real* beautiful game of hockey.
As well, more than almost anywhere there are built-in rivalries that will probably immediately be re-born from the former incarnation of the Nordiques - not just with Montreal but also Boston (there are many now-small but long-standing linkages between Boston and Quebec City - including around a million Quebec migrants to Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the early 20th C, and there is talk of a high-speed rail link between the two). And I'm pretty sure a new rivalry with the Senators would grow pretty quickly.
PKP (shortened version of Pierre-Karl Peladeau) is batshitinsane, but rich as hell and owns what might be the best "media platform" for a sports team in the entire league.
The only problem from where I sit is that it would screw up the current Conference/Division organization, which is pretty perfect (at least in the East) at the moment.