The Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins will continue their long and historic NHL rivalry, however, it will take place in a different location as the two sides face off in a pre-season exhibition game at Centre Videotron in Quebec city, according to a club announcement on Wednesday afternoon.
As mentioned in the press release, this will be the seventh time the club has played a pre-season game in the city as they await the NHL expansion with 3 teams listed to join the league.
As noted by Sportsnet, the Centre Videotron opened to the public for the first time in September of 2015 as the hope was and continues to be for a team to eventually play in it. The stadium is a venue of which could see a potential ownership group taking over in the near future as it is currently standing on free terms.
CBC recently reported that the Quebec Federation of Labour's Solidarity Fund is one of many to have expressed interest early on to help with financial terms in order to bring the Nordiques back home to the city.
Leading the Québécois group with their name currently under contract, Pierre Karl Péladeau, and the entirety of the shareholder have made the suggestion of which would say the investment fund tied to the province's largest labour federation could indeed be a potential investor.
As per the words of spokesman Patrick McQuilken on Friday, he said that no formal requests have been made by Québécois, however, Gaetan Morin who is the organization's president and CEO would be more than willing to go through any requests with "great interest."
This is a company who has already done so much for Quebec as a whole. Given the fact that they have helped fund the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League as well as the Montreal Impact of MLS.
They have also helped raised funds for the dearly-beloved Montreal Expos which is the current site of interest for all as the Toronto Blue Jays have held games at Stade Olympique over the course of the past three years as part of a presentation to Major League Baseball.
At the moment, it is not mandatory that this project comes out successful as it is only the beginning of a long and hard process. However, others such as Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the province's pension fund manager, could also invest in the team once all is said and done to enforce a return in the near future.
Quebecor submitted an official bid for the expansion of an NHL team to the city back in July though they were only one of three teams with Las Vegas having won alongside them in the bidding process, advancing to round three in order to get everything quickly in place.
At this point in time, there is no likelihood this will be a done-deal anytime soon with lots of work still ahead, this meaning the earliest for an expansion to finally take place would be the 2018 season.