Previously, Denver had been home to the Denver Spurs of the World Hockey Association in the 1975-76 season, then the Colorado Rockies of the NHL from 1976 to 1982. The Spurs failed after 1 season, the Rockies after 6. The Rockies moved to the Meadowlands, becoming the New Jersey Devils.
Starting in the WHA in 1972, the Nordiques reached the Finals in 1975, losing to the Houston Aeros. They made the Finals again in 1977, and beat the Winnipeg Jets. They made the Playoffs in their last 5 seasons in the WHA, and were 1 of the 4 teams that were absorbed into the NHL in 1979.
They didn't do so well. They only won 2 regular-season Division titles, in the Adams Division in 1985 and the Northeast Division in 1995. They got to the Conference Finals in 1982 and 1985, but fell apart by 1987.
They went 12-61-7 in 1989-90, by which time Marcel Aubut had gone from team president under their ownership group to majority owner; 16-50-14 in 1990-91, and 20-48-12 in 1991-92. They got back to the Playoffs in 1993 and 1995. But even though they were once again finding success on the ice, they were losing money, and ended up moving.
The Avalanche have been considerably more successful than their predecessors, either the Nordiques or the previous Denver teams. In just their 1st season, 1995-96, they did something they never came all that close to doing in Québec City: They won the Stanley Cup. The players did the right thing: They took the Cup back to Québec City, where it hadn't been won by a native team ever, except for the 1912 and 1913 Quebec Bulldogs.
The Avs won another Cup in 2001, beating, with some irony, the former Denver NHL team, the Devils. They've also reached the Conference Finals in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002. After a down period, they won a Playoff round last season, and got to Game 7 of the Conference Semifinals.
Québec City, meanwhile, has done their best to get a new team. They've built a new arena, the Videotron Centre. They've got a fan movement going. And they've seen several NHL teams have pathetically low attendance, including, in recent times, the Avalanche. But also the Carolina Hurricanes (who used to be a WHA-NHL team, the New England/Hartford Whalers), the Arizona Coyotes (who used to be a WHA-NHL team, the original version of the Winnipeg Jets), the Atlanta Thrashers (who moved to become the new Winnipeg Jets), the Florida Panthers, the New York Islanders, and, alas, the Devils.
But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman hates Canada, and knows that a team in Québec City won't generate as much revenue as, say, a Sun Belt team. He's been proven right with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Dallas Stars, the Anaheim Ducks and, ugh, the Vegas Golden Knights. But he's also been proven wrong with Miami (the Panthers), Atlanta and Arizona.
As for Québec City hockey, they have the Québec Remparts of the Québec Major Junior Hockey League, reaching that league's Finals in 2006 and 2015, although they lost both times. They've reached the Playoffs every season of their existence, since their establishment in 1997. And, by QMJHL standards, they're very well-supported.
Maybe it's time to move a team to Québec. The NHL overlooked Bettman's love of the Sun Belt and his hatred of Canada, and righted a wrong, and allowed the Atlanta-to-Winnipeg move of 2011. And, while Minnesota isn't in Canada (no matter how cold it gets there), they allowed an expansion team to replace the North Stars, who had moved to Dallas, righting a wrong there. Maybe they can do it again, for Québec City.
The move of the Nordiques was wrong, wasn't it? Sure, the Avs have done well at times, but shouldn't Denver have waited for the expansions of the end of the 20th Century? It was just 3 more seasons for the Nashville Predators, 4 more for the Thrashers, and 5 more for the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild.
It was wrong for Aubut to sell the Nordiques to someone who would move the team out of Québec City, right? T-shirts reading "Marcel Aubut: Wanted Dead or Alive" were often seen in Québec in the late 1990s. And he walked away with $15 million from the sale (about $25 million in today's money). All Nordiques fans got was... those lousy T-shirts?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Marcel Aubut for the Québec Nordiques Moving to Denver
First, some reasons that didn't make the final cut: The Best of the Rest.
Marcel Aubut. He had already kept them afloat once, and gotten them what should have been their biggest break: Surviving the WHA and entering the NHL.
Not every good WHA team survived. The Houston Aeros made the Playoffs in each of the league's 1st 6 seasons, making the Finals 3 times, winning 2 titles, but they didn't even make it to the last season of 1978-79, much less to the merger.
The Cleveland Crusaders, the Minnesota Fighting Saints and the San Diego Mariners each made the Playoffs 3 times. So did the franchise that began as the Ottawa Nationals, and became the Toronto Toros and the Birmingham Bulls, once in each season. But none of these teams got to the final season.
The Cincinnati Stingers, the Indianapolis Racers, and the Philadelphia Blazers/Calgary Cowboys franchise each made the Playoffs twice. The Chicago Cougars, the Los Angeles Sharks and the Phoenix Roadrunners each made it once, but none was still in business for the final WHA season.
The Nordiques were defending champions in 1978, but were still on the verge of folding when they were bought by the Carling-O'Keefe Brewery. They appointed Aubut, then a noted Québec City lawyer, as their new president.
To his credit, since 1995, he has tried to get a new team for the city. He was instrumental in helping get the Videotron Centre built. He does seem to be sorry for what he did, unlike most team owners who cause their team to move, due to either their greed, their mismanagement, or factors beyond their control. Keep that in mind as we go on: Sometimes, there are factors beyond the team owner's control.
He was respected enough to have been elected President of the Canadian Olympic Committee -- the 1st Francophone ever so honored. He was re-elected in 2014. He resigned in 2015, after allegations of sexual harassment, He has apologized for his behavior, and has never been criminally charged, nor sued.
Gary Bettman. If he wants an NHL team to move, it moves, as we have seen.
However, for once, an NHL team moved from a cold weather City, especially in Canada, to a city in America's South or West, and Bettman was not the person most responsible. No question about it, he didn't want the Nordiques to stay in Québec City. But even if he had, I'm not sure there's much he could have done about it. There were other factors at work, as you will soon see.
The Montréal Canadiens. The rivalry between the Habs and the Nords was vicious at times, peaking in a long, nasty fight in a Playoff game at the Montreal Forum on April 20, 1984, known as the Good Friday Massacre.
In French, it is known as La Bataille du Vendredi Saint.
The Nords beat the Habs in the Playoffs in 1982 and 1985; but lost to them in 1984, 1987 and 1993. And they just couldn't compete with them for the hearts and minds of the Province of Québec. All those Stanley Cups the Canadiens won before the Nordiques were even founded. All those legends, including Georges Vezina, Howie Morenz, Maurice and Henri Richard, Doug Harvey, Jacques Plante, and Jean Beliveau, who grew up near Québec City. He and Plante both played for the Quebec Aces of the old Quebec Senior Hockey League.
And even when the Nords were succeeding in the WHA, the Habs won 6 Cups in the 1970s. Yvan Cournoyer, Ken Dryden, Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson. Finally, Québec City native Patrick Roy starred for them in goal -- and then, to rub it in, Roy joined the team after the move to Colorado, and helped them win 2 Cups. (Lafleur ended his career with the Nords, but it was hardly the same thing.)
No matter how much the media tried to make the Nords the team of French speakers and Québec
nationalists, and the Habs the team of English speakers and Canadian nationalists, it just didn't work in the Nords' favor. The Canadiens would always be the Province's favorite team. Or, being that it's Canada, its favourite team.
It was pretty much the same thing as New England: The Whalers would never be as popular as the Boston Bruins, not even in Connecticut. Even in North and Central Jersey, the Devils still haven't eliminated fandom for the New York Rangers. The Anaheim Ducks have the same problem, with many people in Orange County not yet giving up on the Los Angeles Kings.
Eric Lindros. If he had signed with the Nords, would they have stayed? Maybe not: Eventually, he would have demanded a salary that Aubut probably could not have paid. Or, maybe his presence would have driven up revenues enough to pay his salary and save the team.
But it was never going to happen. Whether it was his decision, or that of his parents, Carl and Bonnie, who would later drive the Philadelphia Flyers' management nuts (and Ed Snider and Bob Clarke didn't need the help), Lindros wasn't going to play for the Nordiques. Upon his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2016, he told ESPN he didn't have a problem with the city, or with its fans, or with having to learn French. It was all about Aubut: "I was not going to play for that individual, period."
Eric Lindros, making peace with Québec City, 2017
Now, the Top 5:
5. Le Colisée de Québec. It had been built in 1949, for the Quebec Aces of the Quebec Senior Hockey League, with 10,034 seats. When the Nordiques arrived in 1972, capacity was roughly the same.
A condition for them entering the NHL was a larger arena. An expansion got capacity up to 15,750, but it remained an old-time arena. By the time the Nords left in 1995, only the Montreal Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, and the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium were older; the Gardens was the only one of those left at the start of the 1996-97 season, and in the 1998-99 season, even that was closed.
The arena in its last years, known as Colisée Pepsi
A new arena was necessary, and it was not soon in coming. Denver had that part of the answer:
4. Denver. If an NHL team was going to move in 1995, Denver was a great place to go. It was a city of about 600,000 people with a metropolitan area of about 3 million. It had the McNichols Sports Arena, built in 1975, and by 1995 having a capacity of 17,171; and a plan to build a new arena, which became the Pepsi Center (ironically, having the same sponsor that the Colisée would have in its last years), which opened in 1999 and seated 18,007 for hockey.
Pepsi Center
True, both the NHL and the WHA had failed in Denver in the 1970s. But the 1990s had seen the city embrace baseball, with the Colorado Rockies name revived; and keep its interest in football with the Broncos and basketball with the Nuggets. Colorado was ready to try hockey again.
3. The Québec Major Junior Hockey League. It's not just the Remparts. It has teams from all over the Province, from Gatineau on the Québec side of the Ottawa River across from the national capital to Rimouski in the Gaspé Peninsula, a span of 456 miles. Because of the QMJHL, the people of Québec don't really miss the Nordiques.
LHJMQ (Ligue de hockey junior majeur du Québec) also includes teams in the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. That nearly doubles the span, to 835 miles.
2. Demographics. Québec City is home to 532,000 people. There are cities in North America with fewer people and at least one major league sports team. But, as is the case with pretty much every major Canadian city except Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, the metropolitan area doesn't have much in the way of suburbs. What suburbs it does have makes the overall population rise to only about 800,000.
Québec City
The area simply isn't big enough of a metropolitan area to support a major league team, in any sport. Certainly not in the NHL, with 41 home games a year, in the cold Winter months.
But the big culprit is politics. And I don't mean NHL politics, led by dictator Gary Bettman. I mean actual politics. A very nasty form, which is tinged by national pride (both a real country and a proposed country), language, and even religion, all of it carrying accusations of discrimination:
1. The Parti Québecois. First, they won the Provincial election in 1976, and launched a sovereignty referendum in 1980. It failed by a vote of 60 percent to 40. Then they lost the 1985 election. But they regained power in 1994, partly due to the federal government's alleged slights to the Province and its culture.
Behind party leader and Premier (like the Governor of one of our States) Jacques Parizeau, the PQ (or "Pequistes") launched a new referendum in 1995, and both sides campaigned very hard for it, including with competing rallies in downtown Montreal, the city where it was always going to be decided, and with ugly charges on both sides. In the end, on October 30, 1995, the vote was nearly an even 50-50 split.
Jacques Parizeau, Premier of Québec 1994-96,
very nearly the 1st President of the Republic of Québec
It just barely failed. With a turnout of 93.5 percent of registered voters, here was the result: Non, 2,362,648 votes, or 50.58 percent; Oui, 2,308,360 votes, or 49.42 percent. The number of spoiled ballots, ballots that could not be accepted for whatever reason, was larger than the Non side's margin of victory, 54,288 votes -- shades of what would happen in Florida 5 years later.
That was 4 months after the Nordiques moved. That was the PQ's only concern in 1995: Separating from Anglophone Canada. They were not interested in building a new arena to keep the Nordiques, or modernizing the old one. They just wanted to stick it to Ottawa, to "protect the French language," and to promote Québec's status from a "distinct society" within Canada to an independent nation of its own.
Anything else was simply not their department. This would also include building a new ballpark for the Montreal Expos: They weren't willing to do that, either, any more than the City of Montreal was.
The PQ was more interested in stepping to Ottawa than in stepping up for its own people. Said people finally accepted this in 2003, and restored the Liberal Party to power in the Provincial election. By then, restoring the Provincial capital to the NHL had ceased to be a priority.
VERDICT: Not Guilty. Marcel Aubut is no saint, but he's also not a major reason why the Québec Nordiques moved. And he still has a chance, and apparently still has the desire, to get the city restored to the NHL.
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