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QUEBEC CITY — Tucked away at the event level inside the Videotron Centre is 20,000 square feet of empty space. It’s mostly used for storage, and sometimes catering. But the space, according to venue staff, has been set aside with the hope of someday turning it into a state-of-the-art locker room for the return of the Quebec Nordiques.
It’s been almost 30 years since the NHL left Quebec City. The Nordiques moved to Denver in May 1995, becoming the Colorado Avalanche. Various attempts to revive the franchise over the intervening decades have been unsuccessful.
“It was a tragedy,” said Jocelyn Thibault, who played in the Nordiques’ final two seasons. “When you lose a professional team, it leaves a big hole in a city. It put a hole in a lot of people’s hearts.”
On Sunday, regular-season pro hockey returned to Quebec City for the first time in decades. The Professional Women’s Hockey League brought its “Takeover Tour” of neutral-site games across North America to the city, with the Montreal Victoire playing the Ottawa Charge in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 18,000 fans — the second-largest announced attendance of the season.
The PWHL, which is in only its second season, is already looking to add up to two teams as early as the 2025-26 season. With its facility, proximity to the league’s other Canadian franchises and fan support, Quebec City makes a strong case for expansion.
Is a women’s hockey team the most likely way to bring back pro hockey to the city?
It may not be an NHL city anymore, but Quebec City is still a hockey city. On Friday night, two days before the PWHL game, fans filed into a local rink to watch the Cégep Limoilou Titans, the top-level women’s team in the city.
We always have a lot of attendance around here,” said Titans assistant coach Laurence Beaulieu, who played one season in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League. “It’s not like this everywhere in the league, only (Quebec City). That’s what makes it a hockey town and incredible for professional hockey.”
One of the key arguments in favor of the PWHL expanding to Quebec City is the passionate fans who have been waiting not just for pro hockey but for any professional team to get behind. There hasn’t been a top-level professional franchise in the city since the Nordiques left, but that hasn’t stopped people from showing up for their local teams.
Should the city get a team, Tremblay said they could build a new locker room, offices and more treatment rooms for the team with some of the space that’s been earmarked for the Nordiques. And while some concerts and other events are held at the venue, there should be more than enough dates to give a PWHL team 15 home games.
There is a school of thought that a team in Quebec City could siphon support away from the league’s successful Montreal franchise. However, having a team in Quebec City could also reignite one of the most intense rivalries in the sport.
Growing up in Montreal, we hated the Nordiques,” said Thibault. “The rivalry was so alive. I think having an NHL or PWHL team in Quebec City would just help both franchises.”
Not to mention, a team in Quebec City would likely draw more fans from the regions surrounding the city — even from neighboring Maine or New Brunswick — that are much further from Montreal.
Of course, the PWHL will look further into the ticket sales from Sunday’s game and see where people came from — did they come from Montreal or Ottawa? How many were from the local area? — to see how sustainable the support for a team might be, and if it would affect its other franchises.
The league will also look at the youth hockey landscape and how the PWHL can affect the community. Girls hockey registration in the province has increased by almost two thousand over the last three years. In 2023-24, nearly 8,000 girls registered to play hockey in Quebec, according to Hockey Canada, which is fourth among provinces in the country, behind Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
Locally, a lot of fans are optimistic about the PWHL coming to town. One fan, Tommy Castonguay, the vice president of hockey operations for the Remparts, said, “We have the space, we have our team to help. So I think all the ingredients are there.”
There are some challenges the Nordiques faced that are now question marks for the PWHL. With a population of around 560,000 — 850,000 if we include the metropolitan area — Quebec City is a smaller market compared to other candidates for PWHL expansion, such as Detroit with around 630,000 in the city and 4.3 million in the metro area.
Quebec City was the smallest market in the NHL, and the second smallest major-league city behind only Green Bay, Wisc., home of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. And when the NHL eventually expands again, it’s more likely to look to Atlanta and Houston, massive television markets, over reviving the Nordiques.
There was also a limited corporate base in the region at the time the Nordiques existed, and despite fan support at the old Colisée, the franchise was financially ailing before it ultimately decamped to Denver. The local economy is more diverse now than it was then, with major insurance companies (such as Desjardins and Beneva) based in the metro area and a growing information and communication technologies industry.
We’re not the same city that we were 30 years ago,” said Tremblay. “At that time we were a civil servant city. Now we have insurance companies, (tech) companies. We have big head offices in Quebec City and with young professionals.
The reasons why (the Nordiques) left don’t exist anymore in my mind.”
Still, Quebec City will need to compete with major North American markets also interested in PWHL expansion. According to Scheer, the league will examine more than 20 proposals from interested parties. Previous stops on the league’s barnstorming tour included a sellout in Vancouver (19,038), and a U.S. attendance record in Denver (14,018). Detroit, St. Louis and Pittsburgh are other strong candidates.
We’ve been to many markets that have supported us, have been there for us, and there’s a lot of cities that want us there,” said Montreal goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens, who grew up outside Quebec City. “Obviously my heart supports Quebec City if they want a team.”
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