BRIGHTON, Mass. – Bruins coach Claude Julien only played 14 games in the NHL as a 25-year-old defenseman in the mid-1980’s and all of those games came with the Quebec Nordiques.
So, it’s no surprise that the B’s bench boss is more than a little vocal about the NHL returning to Quebec City as the B’s prepared to play a neutral-site exhibition game against the Montreal Canadiens at the city’s new Videotron Centre, with a capacity of more than 18,000.
Right now it houses mostly junior hockey and musical concerts, but the hope is that NHL expansion will return the Nordiques to their home city now that they have a new, state-of-the-art NHL building.
The Nordiques moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995.
Still, it will feel like the NHL is back in Quebec City on Tuesday night when favorite son Patrice Bergeron skates in the game for the Bruins, and they pack an “A” lineup for the preseason with Brad Marchand, Zdeno Chara, David Krejci, Torey Krug, Tuukka Rask and David Backes all expected to play for the Black and Gold.
“It’s always a pretty good atmosphere when these two teams meet no matter where it is,” said Julien. “There’s a city there [in Quebec] that would love to have an [NHL] team there, and deserves to have an [NHL] team there. It would certainly be a good addition to the league, so hopefully that happens for them someday.”
Quebec City was one of the two finalists for an NHL expansion franchise, along with Las Vegas in this past round of expanding the league, and of course lost out to a Vegas group that will have a team for the 2017-18 NHL season.
Boston Bruins
Given the imbalance of teams in the Western and Eastern Conferences that will exist even after Vegas is welcomed into the NHL, it will be a bit of a wait for Quebec City unless another team in the East relocates to the Nordiques’ home just as the former Atlanta Thrashers did by moving up to Winnipeg five seasons ago.
But one would expect that within the next five years, one way or another, the NHL will return to another one of the Canadian locales, in Quebec City, that never should have lost their storied franchise in the first place.