from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

According to Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner, interested financial parties remain in regular contact with league headquarters in New York, ever hopeful that the NHL will land a franchise there again as it did with the NHL-WHA merger at the end of the 1970s.

“We’re in fairly regular touch with Quebec City,” said Daly. “They continue to have an interest in an NHL franchise. We’re not in a position to promise them one at this point, but the dialogue continues for sure.”

Meanwhile, the city’s 18,259-seat Videotron Centre, which opened in 2015, awaits a big league tenant. Shaped like a giant smoke detector, it was built on the hope it would entice NHL honchos to come back, giving the home province Canadiens a neighborhood rival.

The main factor working against Quebec City: the relative low number of corporations, and their spending power, within the immediate metro area. It’s an avid hockey fandom — as proven when the Nordiques were in residence — but it takes corporations to fill luxury suites and buy into lucrative advertising sponsorships.

Houston remains perhaps the ripest and richest potential contender to land another NHL franchise in the United States, following the recent approved addition of Seattle (to open in October 2021).

“There’s an interest in NHL hockey in Houston,” said Daly, echoing a sentiment long held by Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs.

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