Should Quebec City Get an NHL Team Before Houston or Atlanta?

Adam Proteau says if the NHL expands to 34 teams, Houston would be a worthy choice, but Quebec City deserves a shot before Atlanta.

The topic of NHL expansion is never left alone for very long. 

As the years have passed, hockey’s top league has consistently taken the “nothing to see here” route, yet as we’ve seen recently in Seattle and Vegas, there eventually are markets NHL brass wants to tap into, and the league inevitably grows.

And so it didn’t surprise many people when recent expansion rumors arose, this time with ESPN personalities hinting this past week that the NHL is interested in bringing teams to Houston and Atlanta. 

And while we’re sure there are good reasons to expand to those two places, we can’t discuss expansion without spending time talking about Quebec City. That city has been without NHL hockey since the Nordiques departed for Colorado back in 1995, and while there are issues it has as an NHL market, Quebec City deserves a second chance as much, if not more than Atlanta does. Let’s talk about why that is.

But before we do, we can acknowledge Houston is probably the front-runner for the next expansion city. There’s an NHL-caliber arena already in place there, and the owner of it – Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the NBA’s Houston Rockets – would likely love nothing more than to find a tenant to fill up the building 41 additional nights per year. 

Houston’s population of approximately 2.28 million people is bigger than that of five current NHL cities, and they have the business infrastructure that’s more powerful than Quebec City.

That said, Quebec City also has a modern arena that needs a team to fill its seats, and we know full well that there’s a deeply-ingrained hockey culture there that would rush to support an NHL team. We also know that there’s an uphill climb for Quebec City when you strictly look at its population, as evidenced by the 2018 expansion-related comments of Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs.

“Quebec is challenged, OK, I’m going to put it nicely,” Jacobs told reporters. “Look at the income base and the population base and there probably isn’t a smaller market, so they’re going to really have to distinguish themselves in some other way, I would think.”

Jacobs is accurate – Quebec City’s city population of approximately 550,000 would be the smallest of any NHL market, while the metropolitan population of more than 800,000 would be the second smallest. However, has anyone been paying attention to the Arizona Coyotes? That team is in a 4,600-seat rink, albeit temporarily, but Quebec City is the problem? We don’t think so. 

Quebec is a smaller locale, but, like the Winnipeg Jets, they have a built-in, ready-to-go fan base that undoubtedly would have better attendance than many current NHL markets. And if Atlanta is back on the radar of NHL brass after the disastrous route that sent it to Winnipeg, Quebec City should be given a second chance before Atlanta gets one.

Some might suggest a Quebec City NHL team would struggle because NHL players won’t want to play in a fishbowl market where many fans don’t speak English. We beg to differ. First of all, the NHL Players’ Association would happily welcome 23 more NHL jobs, regardless of the city those jobs are located in. Secondly, Montreal works just fine with a bilingual fan base. And for a long time, Quebec City worked well as an NHL town. A combination of economic factors was behind the Nordiques franchise’s move to Denver, but let’s not forget that Denver needed two chances at NHL hockey before it got it right.

The prospect of 34 NHL teams may be too much for older hockey fans accustomed to a much smaller league, but as an entertainment entity, the NHL could continue to thrive with two more teams aboard. They’ve already got history in Quebec City and Atlanta, and there’s good reason to imagine Quebec City and Houston would be good for business. It’s going to take more lobbying and a smart business plan for Quebec City to wind up getting NHL hockey back, but the league is already supporting relatively small towns, and franchise values have done nothing but rise.

When it comes to expansion, let’s give Quebec City another kick at the can. They’ve learned the hard way what it’s like when an NHL team departs, and they should have a chance to atone for that history.