NHL hockey is back in Quebec City this week, but the Los Angeles Kings aren’t the team longtime fans of the defunct Nordiques dream of.
In his Quebec basement, surrounded by Nordiques memorabilia, Yan Marcil said that his team’s departure for Colorado in 1995 had certainly left “a scar,” but that the pain had disappeared with time.
“I was 16,” he said, “and I cried.”
For five years he refused to watch hockey on television.
“I gave up everything,” he said.
Several decades later, Marcil and many other Nordiques fans would attend the Kings’ two preseason games at the Videotron Centre.
The first was Thursday night against the Boston Bruins — the Kings won 4-1, led by Quinton Byfield’s hat trick.
The 22-year-old Ontarian scored twice in 25 seconds during the second period.
Byfield completed the hat trick at 7:59 in the third period. One of his accomplices was Phillip Danault, of Victoriaville.
The match attracted 17,334 fans.
“A step” towards a new team in Quebec?
The Kings’ trip, which received a $7 million government subsidy, was called by Quebec an opportunity to showcase the city — and its arena, which was built in hopes of attracting an NHL franchise — and its ability to host a team.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction to welcome a team to Quebec City — it’s just one step — and we’ll need more,” Finance Minister Eric Girard said last year.
While Marcil admits he’s looking forward to the games this week, he and Nordiques fans are skeptical when asked if the Kings’ stop in Quebec City will earn the city a Bettman Circuit concession.
Jean-François Leclerc, who calls himself one of the Nordiques’ biggest fans, still has a quiver in his voice when he recounts how his idol, Peter Stastny, scored the winning goal in overtime to eliminate the Montreal Canadiens in the 1985 playoffs.
Leclerc said that unlike the Canadiens, the Nordiques have always been the underdogs who played in a small market that proudly celebrated its French-speaking heritage by wearing the fleur-de-lis on its jerseys. Unlike the Habs, they have never won the Stanley Cup — which, oddly enough, has seemed to make them more likable.
“It’s us against the rest of the world,” he summed up.
While he would love to see a team move to Quebec City, he doesn’t believe the NHL wants another franchise in Canada, and is aware that the cost of getting one — estimated by some sources at $1 billion — is ridiculous.
“I work in finance, so I understand this reality,” Leclerc said.
So, he and Marcil did something that would have been unthinkable at the time when the Nordiques played in Quebec: they became Canadiens fans.
Quebec, not a real option
Moshe Lander, a sports economist at Concordia University, puts Quebec City’s chances of getting a team at less than 10 per cent. He believes the absence of billionaires hurts the chances of the NHL granting a team to another Canadian city. Quebec City, he says, would be a tough sell to players because of its size, geographic location, language barriers and tax rates.
Lander adds that the city’s name is being floated by the league as one of those that could get an expansion team just to drive up the ante and squeeze the most money out of other markets.
“Quebec is being used as a foil in a very strategic game staged by very clever billionaires and the Prime Minister [ François Legault ] fell into the trap by believing that Quebec would get a team,” he said in a telephone interview.
Leclerc, who lives in Gatineau, will not be traveling to Quebec City for the preseason games. He denounces government subsidies, which he believes make Quebecers look like hillbillies who have to pay millions of dollars to host a team.
On Wednesday, several curious onlookers who came to watch the Kings practice at the Videotron Centre described themselves as Nordiques fans. None of them seemed very optimistic about the return of a team to Quebec City.
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