Bill Daly was in Quebec City on Thursday to take in some World Cup of Hockey pre-tournament action, and hopes to return in the future to deliver good tidings of the NHL's return to local hockey fans.

He just doesn't know when.

"I wish I knew," Daly said Thursday, per Amalie Benjamin of NHL.com. "I can't give you that answer. I was actually asked at customs today whether I was coming to announce the Nordiques coming back. I said, 'Not today.' But hopefully at some point in my career."

Passed over in the expansion process this time around, Quebecor remains committed to an NHL team back to Quebec City. Daly, the league's deputy commissioner, reiterated the main issue is the preexistence of 16 teams in the Eastern Conference, on top of the devaluation of the Canadian dollar in recent months.

"I think I would say probably the most important of those situations hasn't resolved itself and can't really resolve itself without a further expansion, and that's the geographic imbalance," he said. "So I think that was a huge hurdle that this expansion application had from the start. I think we were upfront about that."

Daly added the Videotron Centre is a first-rate facility that could easily host an NHL team, but time will tell whether Quebec City joins Las Vegas as one of the league's new homes.