When I was a kid, say grades 3 to 6, I lived near downtown Montréal and the mythic Montréal Forum, where the Montréal Canadiens played. Of course, the entire school rooted for the Habs, and Patrick Roy was my boyhood idol, but the rebel in me needed to go against the grain, so I started rooting for the Québec Nordiques. We're talking 1986-1990, so the Nordiques were on their way to a very bad place, and there were many reasons why players didn't want to play there, from the team bottoming out to many American products not being available in the smallish town to the fact that at the time, Québec was a majority-French city where even the team's contracts were drafted in French first.
One player who was rumoured to be part of that mindset at the time was Brent Ashton, but not only is it very difficult to find any corroborating evidence of that today, but he denied it himself when he signed this card (in black sharpie) at a trade show roughly 15-20 years ago (and initially re-signed with the team for four seasons):
Do you know who didn't want to play in Québec, though? John Ogrodnick, the guy Ashton was traded to the Detroit Red Wings for.
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