Haha awesome. So are you an Avs fan? or did you find someone closer to home when they moved?
I still think that's one of the saddest, weirdest franchise moves ever. I mean, I get that Quebec is a small market by pro sports standards, but you rarely see a contender move like that. They were one of my favorite teams to watch as a kid. Sakic? Forsberg? What a team.
The Canadian dollar was obviously not as strong back then, which was a big issue, and the owner did not want to get rid of all the star players. There was a few interesting projects to try to finance the team, but the government all turned them down.
At last, Labatt wanted to buy the team in order to compete against Molson in Québec, but Molson(who owns the Canadiens) did everything in their power to dissuade them in order to take control of the beer market. They, in fact, promised Labatt to stay away from the Toronto market if they didn't buy the team.
The Nordiques were strongly tied to the O'keefe beer company back then. Most Nordique fans would only drink that. So, Molson had this idea that if the Nordiques left, everybody would drink their beer and cheer for Montreal. That did not happened. A lot of people stop watching hockey altogether. The promise that the team would never ever leave was broken, and that broke a lot of people's heart.
There is still a sour taste in people's mouth when they see empty arenas across the league. A little bit like Notre Dame stadium, the colisée was always sold out no matter what. There was a year they won under 10 games, and it was still sold out for every game.
This was by far the fiercest rivalry the NHL has ever seen, and it's not even close, and there are still a lot of people that watch the Canadiens for the single purpose of watching them loose. Therefore, to answer your question I have 29 favourite teams, hehe. I don't dislike the Avalanche, nor do I love them. I would say that I like the wings a little bit more then the other 28, because of Pavel Datsyuk.
That team was incredible. Although, there is a strong sentiment that Patrick Roy would have never been dealt to Québec. Jocelyn Thibault and Hextall were not exactly Roy lol. Fun fact about Fosberg. He was acquired in what was probably one of the grand coup in North American sport history.
Eric Lindros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The rumor is that Marcel Aubut purposely pinched the thigh of Lindros' mom, so they would request the trade. He was viewed as the next Gretzky back then...
