{"id":435507,"date":"2026-01-30T03:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/435507\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T03:59:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T03:59:17","slug":"canadiens-vs-nordiques-battle-of-quebec-returns-as-avalanche-wear-throwback-jerseys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/435507\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens vs. Nordiques? Battle of Quebec returns as Avalanche wear throwback jerseys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MONTREAL \u2014 The last time the Montreal Canadiens played at home against a team wearing the classic Quebec Nordiques jerseys was April 5, 1995 at the Montreal Forum.<\/p>\n<p>The Canadiens erased a 5-3 third-period deficit that night to win 6-5, and since NHL home teams wore white jerseys back then, the Nordiques wore blue.<\/p>\n<p>One month later, it was announced that the Nordiques would be moving to Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche. Four months after that, Nathan MacKinnon was born.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a long time.<\/p>\n<p>MacKinnon and his Avalanche teammates were back in those blue Nordiques jerseys for a game in Montreal on Thursday, facing the Canadiens in their now customary home reds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-146399810-scaled-e1769720718318.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-7008061 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-146399810-scaled-e1769720718318.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1708\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n      Memories of the heated Battle of Quebec still resonate with fans. (Denis Brodeur \/ NHLI via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>The Canadiens-Nordiques rivalry was one of the most heated in NHL history. Ask anyone of a certain age in the province what they think of when someone says Good Friday, and a good number of them will talk about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_wKeQJN3odA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Good Friday Massacre between the Canadiens and Nordiques<\/a>, a vicious bench-clearing brawl during the 1984 Stanley Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>It was a rivalry that divided the province and sometimes divided families.<\/p>\n<p>Not so in the case of Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis, who grew up in suburban Laval, Que., just north of Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d St. Louis said Thursday morning. \u201cWe were all Canadiens fans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Canadiens forward Zachary Bolduc comes from the Trois-Rivi\u00e8res, Que., area, a town almost equidistant between Montreal and Quebec City, and an area that was once divided between the rivals.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s not sure the extent to which his family was divided by the rivalry \u2014 Bolduc was born almost eight years after the Nordiques moved to Colorado \u2014 but he joked he would find out once the game started.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll have to ask my dad; they\u2019re coming to the game tonight, so I\u2019ll have to see who he\u2019s cheering for,\u201d Bolduc said. \u201cNo, I\u2019m pretty sure he was a Canadiens fan, but he must have gone to Nordiques games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bolduc played junior for the Quebec Remparts and says the memory of the Nordiques still resonates there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople still talk about the Nordiques and how much they want them to come back to the league,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Nordiques left a mark on the people there, so it\u2019s fun that the Avalanche are playing in those sweaters tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 The last time the Montreal Canadiens played at home against a team wearing the classic Quebec&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,105,5,10828,21,4,273],"class_list":{"0":"post-435507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-colorado-avalanche","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-memorabilia-collectibles","12":"tag-montreal-canadiens","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115982052449088060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}