Quebec Still Longs for Its Lost Hockey Team, a Nationalist Symbol

When the Nordiques left Quebec almost 30 years in the past, the hockey workforce’s departure fueled the sort of mythologizing and nostalgia acquainted to followers of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Nordiques’ stint in Quebec, enjoying there within the N.H.L. from 1979 to 1995, overlapped with the French-speaking province’s two failed makes an attempt to secede from the remainder of Canada, and the workforce’s identification melded with that of their followers: a linguistic minority struggling to say itself in part of the world dominated by English audio system.

The Nordiques wore their politics on their sleeves, actually, placing the Quebec flag’s fleur-de-lis on their uniforms. They additionally sang Canada’s nationwide anthem solely in French.

The workforce’s exit “left a hole in Quebec City and Quebec regional politics, and a hole in Francophone identity, as well,” mentioned Jean-François Lisée, who led the separatist Parti Québécois from 2016 to 2018, and who’s now a columnist for the newspaper Le Devoir.

So ever for the reason that financially ailing Nordiques decamped for Denver, generations of Quebec’s political leaders have sought to deliver them again, going so far as constructing an area that value 370 million Canadian {dollars} (almost $280 million), whilst financial adjustments have made the workforce’s return more and more unlikely.

“People see themselves in a national concept and in a hockey team, or in the memory of a hockey team, and politicians have tried to harness this sense of nationalism for political gains,” mentioned Martin Pâquet, a historian of Quebec at Laval University in Quebec. “That’s essentially why they keep calling for the return of the Nordiques.”

The newest to just do that was the federal government of Premier François Legault, who was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second time period in 2022, however whose approval scores have been falling this previous yr due to a sequence of missteps, together with approving a 30 % wage increase for lawmakers.

In November, his authorities introduced with nice fanfare that it had agreed to pay 5 million to 7 million Canadian {dollars} ($3.8 million and $5.3 million) for the Los Angeles Kings to play two preseason video games in Quebec subsequent October, as a part of a strategic maneuver to maintain urgent the N.H.L. for the town’s personal workforce.

Such a transfer would have maybe led to at the very least a blip up within the polls prior to now. But this time, it backfired. Roundly criticized, the announcement pushed Mr. Legault’s scores farther down, serving to to make him the most unpopular of Canada’s 10 provincial leaders, in keeping with polling by the Angus Reid Institute.

Was the criticism, and the lacking bump within the polls, due to the timing of the announcement? It got here across the identical time that lots of of 1000’s of the province’s public schoolteachers and well being care employees went on strike, demanding higher wages.

Or was it the price of the deal, some huge cash spent on a long-shot gamble? Mr. Legault’s personal finance minister, who has nicknamed himself the “minister of the Nordiques,” acknowledged candidly, if imprudently, that the percentages of getting again a workforce had been solely 10 %.

Maybe it was the ebbing of nationalist emotions among the many French Québécois, particularly the younger. Or was it simply the passing of time?

“If a couple has been separated because one of the members left some 25 years ago, it’s really time to move on,” Mr. Pâquet mentioned.

Of course, the province of Quebec does nonetheless have an N.H.L. workforce: For a long time, the Montreal Canadiens have been one of many league’s most storied franchises.

But for a lot of in Quebec, being a fan of the Canadiens was by no means an choice — that they had by no means been French Canadian sufficient. The Canadiens performed in Montreal, the multicultural, numerous, bilingual metropolis that’s the historic rival of the predominantly French-speaking Quebec City.

Outside the province, although, the Canadiens had been well-known for his or her French Canadian stars, like Guy Lafleur.

As Quebec’s independence motion emerged within the Nineteen Sixties, so did hopes for an N.H.L. workforce in Quebec City, in what was hoped would ultimately turn out to be the capital of a brand new nation. The metropolis received its workforce in 1979 after the Nordiques and others in a smaller league had been absorbed into the N.H.L.

After folks in Quebec voted in opposition to independence the next yr, within the province’s first referendum, some channeled their pissed off nationalist sentiments into fierce help of the Nordiques. Games between the Nordiques and the Canadiens took on mythic proportions, appearing as proxies for bigger battles.

“We learned at a very young age to hate the Canadiens,” mentioned Jocelyn Simard, 65, a French Québécois man who has lived all his life in Quebec City and grew up as a die-hard fan of the Chicago Blackhawks.

Once the Nordiques arrived, Mr. Simard felt he had discovered the workforce he was ready for his entire life. While the Canadian anthem was sung in each French and English earlier than video games elsewhere, solely French was heard within the Nordiques’ area. Mr. Lafleur would play his last two seasons in an extended profession for the Nordiques.

“In the end, many, many French Canadians identified more with the Nordiques than the Montreal Canadiens,” Mr. Simard mentioned, including that he had not misplaced hope in a return of the Nordiques.

Mr. Simard spoke as he watched a sport performed by Quebec’s junior league workforce, the Remparts, on the Vidéotron Center — the dear area that provincial and metropolis leaders inbuilt 2015 with public funds to indicate the N.H.L. how dedicated they had been to getting a workforce.

But if followers of Mr. Simard’s technology tended to share his emotions towards the Nordiques, the workforce’s significance didn’t appear to resonate with youthful hockey followers on the area, many born after the workforce’s departure.

“Me, I’m a fan of the Montreal Canadiens, whereas my father still has the Nordiques in his mind,” mentioned Mathis Drolet, 17, a pupil who grew up in Quebec.

His pal, Justin Tremblay, 17, mentioned he was conscious of how the Nordiques had been tied to earlier generations’ aspirations — “Quebec wanting to become a nation and all that” — however these hopes felt distant to him.

“They’re things we learned at school,” Mr. Tremblay mentioned.

Located within the league’s smallest market — the Quebec metropolitan space now has about 800,000 folks — the Nordiques struggled financially for years and left for Denver in 1995. In the workforce’s first season within the United States, renamed the Colorado Avalanche, it received the Stanley Cup — deepening a way of betrayal in Quebec.

The Parti Québécois-led authorities on the time had refused the Nordiques’ proprietor’s request for a bailout — simply months, it turned out, earlier than the province’s second referendum on independence from Canada.

The referendum failed by a razor-thin margin — with some politicians and political consultants ultimately blaming the loss on the federal government’s refusal to bail out the Nordiques.

And so to today, Quebec’s political leaders vow to deliver again the Nordiques, and even the slightest improvement can generate important consideration within the native news media.

“In Quebec City, those stories are on the front page of newspapers,” mentioned Frank Pons, a professor on sports activities administration at Laval University.

But most hockey business consultants say the possibilities of a return are near nonexistent.

In latest years, the N.H.L. has chosen to develop in larger markets, together with Seattle and Las Vegas, and has given no indication of significantly entertaining Quebec as a candidate for growth or relocation, Mr. Pons mentioned. For the N.H.L., Quebec and its small tv market simply make little enterprise sense.

“It’s an economic approach,” he mentioned, “whereas in Quebec, it’s an emotional approach.”

Given the lingering feelings towards the Nordiques, few anticipate politicians to acknowledge the chilly, arduous reality in regards to the possibilities of the Nordiques ever coming house.

“How many votes would that get you?” mentioned Mr. Lisée, the previous occasion chief. “If you don’t want to be in power, you can say that if you think that. Most politicians will say it would be such a great thing to have the Nordiques back.”