Montréal Victoire Announce Neutral Site Game in Potential Expansion City

The Montréal Victoire will play a neutral site game against the Ottawa Charge in Québec City on January 19, 2025, the Victoire announced on Wednesday.

The news was shared at the 18,000-seat Videotron Centre by Victoire Business Operations Director Marie-Christine Boucher and Martin Tremblay, the president of Gestev, which helped organize the event. Victoire goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens is a native of Charlevoix county, north of Quebec City, and she spoke at the press conference to provide a ‘local’ perspective on the value of the game.

“I won’t lie to you, [to] the people of Charlevoix, Montréal is scary. It’s far away, there’s traffic. They don't really want to go there. I promise you that in Québec [City], they are happy. They all told me that it wasn’t far, it’s easy to access and that they were going to be there.”

The announcement comes at an intriguing time. Although previous reports indicated that the PWHL was not planning expansion for five or six years, the news emerged on Tuesday that the league expects to expand with two more teams by the 2025-26 season.

Local politicians in Québec City have spoken publicly and enthusiastically about the potential for a PWHL team in the market, and the league's Senior Vice President of Hockey Operations Jayna Hefford confirmed last year that Québec City was "a market that we are considering."

There was mixed public reaction to Québec City executives using public money to attract two NHL preseason games to the Videotron Centre in October, an event which was also organized by Gestev in the hopes of attracting an NHL team back to the city. In response, calls to work on drawing the PWHL to Quebec City instead have heightened, as that endeavor is viewed as more likely and less expensive. Indeed, so dedicated are public officials on both sides of the political spectrum to the idea that a member of the opposition party promised to sit beside his opponent at the first PWHL game in Québec City, should it come about.

Whether that promise will be upheld now that a game has been announced, we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Québec City, Bruno Marchand, said only last week that the locale would "definitely raise our hands" for an expansion team should the league indicate movement in the next few years. The January 19 game will be the subject of much interest as the league moves forward with expansion plans.