The NHL seems dead set on expanding in the coming decade. That’s all well and fine. It seems inevitable, and the current owners don’t seem too unhappy about it. The next team that comes into the league will have to pay about $1 billion in expansion fees.
That’s a pretty chunk of change. And that’s a wad of cash that will be redistributed back into the pockets of the current ownership group.
As for which cities could get teams, we looked at one Texas-based team in an earlier piece. But that’s just one of four that could be making its way into the NHL. There’s talk of a third shot in Atlanta, another Midwestern team somewhere in Kansas City, for example, and, potentially, another Canadian team.
That’s where the Avalanche could see themselves indirectly impacted. There’s a strong push for a return to Quebec City, the home of the erstwhile Nordiques.
As you may recall, the Quebec Nordiques folded ahead of the 1995-96 season, moving to Colorado. For the NHL, heading back to Colorado was a bit of a risky move. Colorado had already run a team into the ground, the former Rockies.
So, if hockey returns to Quebec, and it seems really doubtful at this point, would it mean the return of the Nordiques? There would certainly be a push to do so.
When the original incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets moved to Arizona in 1996, the local community pushed to bring back the Jets. The efforts succeeded when the Atlanta Thrashers relocated to Winnipeg in 2011.
If Quebec should get another NHL franchise, what’s stopping the team from being rebranded as the Nordiques?
Avalanche can’t stop new team from being rebranded as “Nordiques”
As it turns out, there’s really nothing to stop a new team in Quebec from utilizing the Nordiques moniker.
Yes, the Avalanche use the Nordiques regalia on certain occasions. But the owner of the intellectual property, that is, the name and logo, is the NHL. According to US Patent 2808917, the NHL owns the trademark “Quebec Nordiques.”
So, if a new team in Quebec wanted to revive the name and logo, the NHL could just license the use of the name of the new club. The new ownership group could pay a token amount like $100 for the license, and rebrand the Nordiques.
It’s the same thing that happened to the Winnipeg Jets.
An interesting footnote here is the Arizona Coyotes. The reason why the Utah club wasn’t the Utah Coyotes, for example, was because the Coyotes are still technically an NHL franchise. The league deactivated the Coyotes for five years to give the owners a chance to figure things out.
That’s why the NHL technically has 33 teams. If the Coyotes never come back, the NHL will likely purchase the trademark at some point. So, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Utah Mammoth return as the Coyotes at some point down the line.
In the meantime, the NHL will have to address the potential conflict that might arise from the Avalanche adopting the Nordiques identity, with a revival of the original franchise name in a second incarnation.
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