The Ottawa Senators' six-day preseason trip to Quebec City has already been a whirlwind of bonding with that city's hockey community.
The Sens held a red-carpet event with fans before their first practice at the Videotron Centre, where fans were invited to stay and watch the two on-ice sessions on Saturday morning. They held a long meet and greet with fans, signing autographs and posing for photos. They visited La Bouchée Généreuse, a foodbank in Quebec City, to help sort food donations and scrub and wash the donation bins. Former Senators Patrick Lalime and Antoine Vermette visited Centre mère-enfant Soleil at the local children's hospital to spend time with the patients and their families.
On Sunday, they'll play the first of two preseason games in Quebec, hosting the New Jersey Devils (3 pm) before taking on the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday.
It's all very nice, of course – really nice. But it begs the question, why are they pouring this love into a neutral site? Why not just play preseason games as usual at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, where your season ticket holders live?
It comes down to this. The Sens see opportunity in the Quebec City market. They would love to recruit Nordiques fans who entered free agency when their NHL team left town. Remarkably, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Nordiques bolting for Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche.
"I'm of the generation that had the Nordiques growing up, and the rivalry was alive and well," Sens owner Michael Andlauer said on the day the Quebec City games were announced. "If you loved the Nordiques, you didn't like the Montreal Canadiens.
"And for me, it's an opportunity to relate to the city of Quebec, as Ottawa, and continue that rivalry."
Team President Cyril Leeder echoed those comments on TSN 1200 radio.
“It’s a move on our part designed to help us expand our broadcast footprint, especially with francophone fans. Our broadcast territory goes from Kingston to Newfoundland.
"So this has been in the works for us to help grow that footprint and that fan base.”
There's no question that Quebec City remains a hockey hotbed. And if the Senators are right, and Quebec City's NHL fandom remains available to some degree, it probably won't be for much longer. With the Battle of Quebec lying dormant for 30 years, there's now an entire generation of francophone fans who didn't grow up with the rivalry, so it's quite likely that the Habs have begun to win some of them over, much to their parents' chagrin.
That will never happen with the 40-and-over crowd, of course. They remember the fierce rivalry of the Battle of Quebec, and their favourite team is now, generally speaking, the team that's playing the Habs on any given night.
But will Quebec City's fans turn out for the Sens promo tour this week because they're really interested in becoming Ottawa Senators fans, or because they want to show Andlauer and the NHL that their city and arena remain a great alternative if things ever go sideways in the capital, as they have at times in the past?
It's probably a little from column A and a little from column B, and that's okay. The latter option is never happening, and when the Sens accounting department totals up this week's gate receipts, there's no column in the ledger for buying motivation.
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