NHL hockey is back in Quebec City this week, but the Los Angeles Kings aren’t the team that fans of the long-departed Quebec Nordiques have longed to see.
In his Quebec City basement, surrounded by Nordiques memorabilia, Yan Marcil says the departure of the city’s former NHL team to Colorado in 1995 has left a “scar” whose pain has faded over time.
“I was 16,” he said, “and I still cried.” For the next five years, he refused to watch hockey at all. “I renounced everything,” he said.
Decades later, Marcil and many other Nordiques fans will be filling the stands this week as the L.A. Kings play two pre-season games in Quebec City, beginning Thursday night against the Boston Bruins.
Subsidized by up to $7 million in public money, the Kings’ trip has been billed by the Quebec government as an opportunity to showcase the city — and the …