How Canada’s Stanley Cup Drought Could’ve Been Stopped Before It Ever Started
Thirty years ago, a team built in Quebec City took steps toward a dynasty… in Denver.
Another year, another missed chance to bring the Stanley Cup back north to its home nation. For the second straight season, the Edmonton Oilers fell to the Florida Panthers in the championship round, marking 31 consecutive seasons without a Cup for Canadian teams. The 20-year rolling average location of the Cup hasn’t been north of the border since 1988, and after a recent run of Sun Belt champs, it currently resides just north of the Missouri-Arkansas border — nobody’s idea of a hockey hotbed:
Given the NHL’s longstanding push to expand into the South and West under commissioner Gary Bettman, this shift was probably inevitable. But 30 years ago this summer, one pivotal event could have — in another timeline — at least forestalled the drought, if not ended it before it ever began.
That defining moment? The Quebec Nordiques’ move from Quebec City to Denver, Colorado in 1995.
Not only did it uproot a franchise that first began in the World Hockey Association during the early 1970s — surviving the transition to the NHL when the rival leagues merged, and remaining competitive for most of the 1980s (thanks to Michel Goulet and a trio of Stastny brothers) — but it also stripped away a potent symbol of Québécois identity at a time of renewed nationalist fervor. The move came just months before the 1995 Quebec referendum on independence, which narrowly failed by less than 1 percentage point.
Like the cause of Quebec sovereignty itself, the reasons for the Nordiques’ loss were complex: Financial instability, an aging arena, a weak Canadian dollar and a lack of public funding all contributed to the team’s sale and relocation. The Nordiques were based in one of the NHL’s smallest and most linguistically-isolated markets, with limited access to Anglophone media coverage and a shrinking ability to compete financially as player salaries skyrocketed in the early-to-mid 1990s.
Owner Marcel Aubut sought government support to help fund a replacement for the outdated Colisée, but Premier Jacques Parizeau refused — and a half-hearted “Save the Nordiques” rally, drawing just a few hundred attendees, only reinforced the perception of local apathy. Though the team was still technically profitable at the time of its sale, Aubut saw the writing on the wall and sold to COMSAT Entertainment on May 25, 1995, clearing the path for the franchise’s move to Denver that summer.
At the same time, it was undeniable that Quebec had built the foundation of a real Cup contender, despite all the off-ice turmoil.
After bottoming out in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, transitioning out of the Stastny Era and through a period where Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur wore a Nords uni — very odd to see! — general manager Pierre Pagé was busy accumulating talent. His predecessors Maurice Filion and Martin Madden had already started the job, drafting Joe Sakic in 1987, then Valeri Kamensky in 1988, and Mats Sundin and Adam Foote in 1989 (among others). Owen Nolan arrived with the No. 1 pick in 1990, and in 1991 Pagé made one of the most consequential series of decisions in franchise history.
Holding the first overall pick again, Pagé selected a once-in-a-generation talent from Ontario named Eric Lindros. The only problem? Lindros had warned Quebec beforehand that he wouldn’t play for them, due to either concerns around his marketability out of the Francophone region (as was reported at the time) or a distrust of Aubut (as he later would explain). Either way, the Nordiques sat on Lindros’ rights for a year before finally trading him in one (or maybe two?) of the NHL’s greatest-ever blockbusters.1
The return from the Philadelphia Flyers consisted of seven players (including Hall of Famer Peter Forsberg and multiple All-Stars), a first-round pick and $15 million.2 And while Lindros went on to lead Philly to the Stanley Cup Final in 1997, Quebec’s haul helped set them up to become a dynasty. Forsberg paired with Sakic to become one of the best same-team center duos in hockey history, while other parts of the trade were used to acquire key players that fueled the team for years to come:
By 1992-93, the Nordiques were back in the playoffs with Sundin and Sakic leading the way, and in 1994-95 they had the league’s No. 1 offense by goals per game and ranked No. 2 in goal differential. A classic series against the defending Cup champion New York Rangers followed — and though Quebec fell in six games, they had shown the rest of the league the future:
Within months, though, the Nordiques were no more, with a team that was now to be known as the Colorado Avalanche making its move to Denver.
Just before the calendar flipped to 1996, Colorado pounced on the chance to add legendary netminder Patrick Roy after a mid-game falling out with Montreal, solidifying their previous weakness in goal. A handful of months after that, the Avalanche were upsetting the favored Detroit Red Wings in the playoffs and then sweeping the Panthers to hoist the Stanley Cup — with Quebec’s core leading the way. (Former Nordique players contributed 73.1 percent of Colorado’s Goals Above Replacement during the 1995-96 season.)
That theme would continue over the next few years, throughout an era that saw Colorado win two Stanley Cups and make five conference finals in the six seasons from 1996-2001. During that entire span, 52.6 percent of the Avalanche’s total GAR came from players who’d debuted with the team during its Quebec City days.
It’s hardly a sure thing that the Nordiques would have won those Cups instead, had Aubut kept the franchise in Canada. Bankrolled by their new owners — and sometimes the hit Hollywood movies they produced — the Avalanche ramped up spending to rank among the league’s most expensive rosters in the early 2000s. It’s tough to imagine that the same would have been true in Quebec over that same timeframe, casting at least the 2001 Cup in doubt under a hypothetical world where the team never moves.
However, it’s no stretch at all to envision the Nordiques winning at least in 1996, the same as Colorado did with mostly the same loaded roster that had been with Quebec the previous season. The only question might be if their goaltending situation would have played out the same way, as the Avs wouldn’t have won that Cup without Roy. Would Roy have agreed to a trade to Quebec City instead of Denver? It’s impossible to know — though after his humiliating exit from Montreal, he might have welcomed the chance to stick it to the Habs by joining their provincial rivals. A bigger question might be whether Canadiens brass would have ever allowed that possibility to materialize.
If so, there’s a real chance the Canadian Cup drought is put off by a few years at the very least. And while this next part truly stretches believability, the Avalanche did win yet another Cup in 2022, in an era of greater salary parity and competitiveness for small-market and/or Canadian teams. If the Nordiques had held out in Quebec a bit longer, until the league’s salary-cap era arrived a decade later… who knows?
Obviously, that aspect of our what-if is a bit silly. But given how many near-misses Canadian teams have had over the past 30+ years, every little glimmer of extra Cup probability helps. And the same goes for the hope of a new Quebec team to revive the Nordiques. Every cycle of potential expansion and relocation, Quebec City is mentioned as a possible candidate, and the city did build a new arena — the Centre Vidéotron — in 2012 to bolster its case for a new franchise. The new building is the second-largest hockey arena in North America that doesn’t house an NHL team, and Quebec City may still have the largest population of avid hockey fans outside of the NHL’s current cities.
While the NHL’s track record in righting wrongs is spotty at best, and there is no shortage of flashier counter-candidates — with far more of the required money — bidding for a new team at the same time, there remains something especially cruel about the Nordiques’ fate. The move to Denver crushed fans in Quebec, ripping away a symbol of local pride and identity. Then they had to watch as “their” stars (Sakic, Forsberg and the rest) won Cups in the U.S.
They deserved far better than that.
But as things stand, it’s possible the NHL’s best Canadian team of the past three decades may never have actually played in Canada — further prolonging the country’s endless search for its next Stanley Cup. And all of it was set in motion by one fateful move, three decades ago.
Pagé had independently agreed to two separate trade deals, one with the Philadelphia Flyers and one with the New York Rangers. A neutral arbitrator had to later rule on which deal was valid, siding with the Flyers.
Or the equivalent of $34.5 million now.
Great vid. So basically the Lindros trade was a Herschel Walker-like dynasty-maker.
Two things: first, those Sportsnet trade tree videos are fantastic. I'm patiently waiting a few more years for a Jack Eichel to Vegas one. Second, "what if" QC stuck in Quebec? Imagine instead of the fierce Western Conference Colorado-Detroit rivalry, it was Detroit-QC in the FINALS!