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Islanders to get an attendance boost this weekend from... Nordiques fans?

Nordiques Rally Hockey

Fans gesture during the “Blue March,” asking for the return of an NHL hockey team and a new arena, Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010, in Quebec City. The Nordiques left town 15 years ago. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jacques Boissinot)

AP

While the Islanders and Thrashers are having drastically different seasons with the Islanders being the worst team in the NHL and the Thrashers being a threat for the playoffs, one area where they’re both the same is in attendance. The Thrashers are 28th in attendance and the Islanders are 29th out of 30 teams (source). With the two teams set to square off at Nassau Coliseum on Saturday, it was sure to be yet another lightly attended game.

A funny thing is going to happen though as there’s going to be a band of about 1,100 fans from Quebec storming the arena to tell the NHL that they want a team back in Quebec City. The group of fans are a long-lasting fan club of Nordiques fans that call themselves Nordiques Nation and they’re very serious about getting a NHL team once again. The ultimate insult to the Islanders isn’t that the fans can show up en masse to Nassau Coliseum to stage their own sort of protest, but rather that these Nordiques fans aren’t there to demand their team. Jeff Z. Klein of the New York Times has the story about group founder Vincent Cauchon’s efforts to show the NHL they mean business.

“One reason we picked Nassau is because every time we watched an Islanders game on TV, there was no one in there,” said Cauchon, who noted that the price for the trip, hotel and game ticket was $200 per person.

Still, it is the Thrashers, not the Islanders, who the Quebec fans have their eyes on, according to Cauchon.

“We have a lot of respect for the New York Islanders and what they accomplished in the past — the N.H.L. needs the Islanders,” Cauchon said. “But it would be great, awesome, if the Thrashers moved. Atlanta is a great sports city, but it’s not a hockey town. We’re not going to New York to tell the N.H.L. they didn’t do a good job going to Atlanta. We’re going there to tell them in Quebec it would work.”


We can’t blame Cauchon and Nordiques Nation for doing their damnedest to show the NHL they’re serious about wanting a team back. After all, with people in power angling to get a new arena built in Quebec City (something that killed the Nordiques and got them moved to Denver in the 90s) is a huge deal and shows that the city is serious about having a team again. Getting the show of dedication from the fans is an even bigger deal because there’s no way a team would want to move to a city where there are no fans, nor would the NHL consider expansion to such a place (we’d hope).

Give credit to Cauchon for putting the positive spin on things. Showing up to a game in either team’s arena to play the part of the vulture fan is an instant way to upset everyone else there, regardless of how many of their fans are at the game. We can’t help but wonder how this is going to play out though. Do they cheer wildly for the Thrashers when they score? Do they start doing Nordiques chants for the team? Do they boo the Islanders in their own house? The possibilities are endless and all of a sudden, we want to watch Islanders-Thrashers on Saturday because of it. Good work Nordiques Nation.