Dallas Stars
The Dallas Stars are a professional ice hockey team based in Dallas. The Stars compete in the National Hockey League as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The Stars played in Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas from 1993 to 2001, when they moved into the American Airlines Center in Dallas's nearby Victory Park neighborhood, an arena they share with the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association.
The Stars were founded during the 1967 NHL expansion as the Minnesota North Stars, based in Bloomington, Minnesota. Before the 1978–79 NHL season, the team merged with the Cleveland Barons after the league granted them permission due to each team's respective financial struggles. The franchise relocated to Dallas for the 1993–94 NHL season and was renamed the Dallas Stars.
The Stars have won nine division titles in Dallas, two Presidents' Trophies as the top regular season team in the league, the Western Conference championship three times, and the Stanley Cup in 1999, when center Joe Nieuwendyk won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. Over the course of the franchise's history in both Minnesota and Dallas, the team has appeared in the Stanley Cup Final five times.
In 2000, Neal Broten was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. In 2009, Brett Hull became the first Dallas Stars player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, followed by Ed Belfour and Joe Nieuwendyk in 2011 and Mike Modano in 2014; Modano is the highest-scoring player in franchise history. Five further players and one coach have since been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
History
1967–1993: Minnesota North Stars
The Minnesota North Stars began play in 1967 as part of the league's six-team expansion. Home games were played at the newly constructed Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. Initially successful both on the ice and at the gate, the North Stars fell victim to financial problems after several poor seasons in the mid-1970s.In 1978, the North Stars merged with the Cleveland Barons, owned by George III and Gordon Gund. With both teams on the verge of folding, the league permitted the two failing franchises to merge. The merged team continued as the Minnesota North Stars, while the Seals/Barons franchise records were retired. However, the Gunds were the merged team's principal owners, and the North Stars assumed the Barons' place in the Adams Division in order to balance out the divisions. The merger brought with it a number of talented players, and the North Stars were revived – they reached the 1981 Stanley Cup Final, where they lost in five games to the New York Islanders. However, by the early 1990s, declining attendance and the inability to secure a new downtown revenue-generating arena led ownership to request permission to move the team to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990. The league rejected the request and instead agreed to award an expansion franchise, the San Jose Sharks, to the Gund brothers. The North Stars were sold to a group of investors that were originally looking to place a team in San Jose, although one of the group's members, former Calgary Flames part-owner Norman Green, would eventually gain control of the team. In the 1990–91 season, the North Stars made it to the Stanley Cup Final, only to lose to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
After the 1990–91 season, the North Stars suffered through declining profits coupled with distraction and uncertainty caused by relocation attempts. The team's fortunes were further impeded by the terms of the settlement with the Gund brothers, in which they were permitted to take a number of North Stars players to San Jose. In their final two seasons in Minnesota, the team adopted a new logo which omitted any reference to the word "North" from "North Stars", leading many fans to anticipate the team heading south. Green explored the possibility of moving the team to Anaheim to play at a new arena under construction, and intended to call the team the Los Angeles Stars. However, the NHL had been courted by The Walt Disney Company to grant them a team to play in Anaheim's new arena. The league asked Green to let Disney take the market, and created the expansion franchise eventually known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. In turn, Green could relocate the North Stars to anywhere he wanted.
1993–1998: Relocation and early years in Dallas
In 1993, amid further attendance woes and bitter personal controversy, Green obtained permission from the league to move the team to Dallas, for the 1993–94 season, with the decision announced on March 10, 1993. Green was convinced by former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach that Dallas would be a suitable market for an NHL team. With the team's move to the Southern United States, Green decided to drop the "North" adjective but otherwise retained the "Stars" nickname, which in its shortened form quickly proved popular as it matched the state of Texas' official nickname as "The Lone Star State." An NHL franchise in Dallas was an experiment for the league, as at that time the Stars would be one of the three southernmost teams in the league along with two recently created expansion teams in the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers as the league's first real ventures into southern non-traditional hockey markets. The Stars would move into Reunion Arena, built in 1980, the downtown arena already occupied by the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks.To quell the ensuing controversy surrounding the North Stars move to Dallas, the NHL promised that the Twin Cities would receive an expansion franchise in the near future; that promise was fulfilled in 2000 in the form of the Minnesota Wild.
With the league changing the names of the conferences and divisions that season, the newly relocated Stars were placed in the Central Division of the Western Conference, although these were essentially continuations of the Norris Division and Campbell Conference respectively, both of which the North Stars had been part of. The first NHL game in Dallas was played on October 5, 1993, and was a 6–4 win against the Detroit Red Wings. Somewhat ironically, Minnesota native Neal Broten scored the first Stars goal in Dallas. Though the Stars were relatively still low on the Dallas-Fort Worth sports pecking order upon their arrival, popularity of the team grew rapidly and the immediate success of the team on the ice, as well as Mike Modano's career-best season helped spur the team's popularity in North Texas. The Stars set franchise bests in wins and points in their first season in Dallas, qualifying for the 1994 playoffs. The Stars further shocked the hockey world by sweeping the St. Louis Blues in the first round, but lost to the eventual Western Conference Champion Vancouver Canucks in the second round. The Stars' success in their first season along with Modano's spectacular on-ice performances, would be an integral part of the Stars' eventual franchise success in the immediate years to come.
The almost immediate success of the Stars was also helped by the long legacy of minor-league hockey in the area. Both incarnations of the Central Hockey League had two teams in the area, the Dallas Black Hawks and the Fort Worth Texans for years before the Stars' arrival. Amateur and youth hockey in North Texas were also extremely popular because of the long presence of the minor league teams.
1994–1998: Arrival of Tom Hicks and building for a championship
The 1994–95 season was shortened by an owners' lockout. The Stars traded captain Mark Tinordi along with Rick Mrozik to the Washington Capitals before the season began for Kevin Hatcher. Longtime North Stars hold-over Neal Broten was named his replacement, although he was traded too after only 17 games to the New Jersey Devils. Broten was replaced by Kevin's younger brother Derian Hatcher as team captain, a role he would serve in for the next decade. The Stars played only 48 games that season posting a record of 17–23–8. Despite the shortened season and the losing record, the Stars again made the playoffs, losing in five games to the Red Wings in the first round. Green, who had run into financial problems stemming from his business ventures outside of ice hockey, was forced to sell the team to businessman Tom Hicks in December 1995.The 1995–96 season would be the first season under new owner Tom Hicks. In the off-season, the Stars traded for former Montreal Canadiens' captain and three-time Frank J. Selke Trophy winner Guy Carbonneau, who was then with the St. Louis Blues. With the Stars struggling to begin the season, general manager and head coach Bob Gainey traded for center Joe Nieuwendyk from the Calgary Flames in exchange for Corey Millen and Jarome Iginla, then a Stars prospect. The Stars recorded only 11 wins in the first half of the season, and Bob Gainey relinquished his coaching duties in January to be the full-time general manager of the team. The Stars soon hired Michigan K-Wings head coach Ken Hitchcock to replace him; it would be his first NHL head coaching position. The Stars then traded for Benoit Hogue from the Toronto Maple Leafs late in the season, but ultimately finished in sixth place in the Central Division, missing the playoffs for the first time since moving to Texas.
In the 1996 off-season, the Stars continued to revamp their roster, adding defensemen Darryl Sydor from the Los Angeles Kings followed by Sergei Zubov from the Pittsburgh Penguins for Kevin Hatcher. Zubov would serve as the Stars' top defenseman and powerplay quarterback until leaving the league in 2009. On the ice, Ken Hitchcock's first season proved to be a good one. The Stars bested their 1994 totals, posting 48 wins and reaching the 100-point mark for the first time in franchise history. The Stars won the Central Division, their first division title since 1983–84 and were seeded second in the playoffs. Despite the regular season success, the youthful Stars were upset in the first round by the Edmonton Oilers in seven games. Defenseman Grant Ledyard tripped in overtime of game 7, allowing Todd Marchant to score the game- and series-winning goal on a breakaway against goaltender Andy Moog.
During the 1997 off-season, the Stars signed star goaltender Ed Belfour as a free agent after a well-publicized falling-out with the San Jose Sharks, which had traded a number of players to the Chicago Blackhawks to obtain him in January in the previous season. Andy Moog was allowed to leave via free agency, but later returned to the Stars as an assistant coach. The 1997–98 season was another banner year for the Stars. The Stars again set franchise records in wins and points. Dallas acquired Mike Keane at the deadline from the New York Rangers. The Stars won the franchise's first Presidents' Trophy as the league's best regular season team, as well as the Central Division title for the second season in a row. Belfour set franchise season records for goals against average, wins and just missed out on the Jennings Trophy by one goal to Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils. The Stars were the first overall seed for the 1998 Stanley Cup playoffs and defeated the eighth-seeded San Jose Sharks in six games in the first round. Notorious enforcer Bryan Marchment injured Joe Nieuwendyk's right knee, forcing him to miss the rest of the playoffs with torn ligaments. In the second round, they again met the Edmonton Oilers, this time defeating them in five games. However, without Nieuwendyk, the Stars lacked the firepower to overcome the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings in the conference finals and lost in six games. The Red Wings went on to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup.