Minnesota North Stars Memories

1993 - Moving to Dallas

By 1992, Norm Green was arranging a deal to turn the team into the L.A. Stars, playing at a new arena under construction in Anaheim, California. However, as The Walt Disney Company was already in negotiations with the NHL to create an expansion team in the area, the league instead asked Green to let Disney create the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim while the North Stars would get a relocation approval to wherever Green wanted. In January 1993, Green chose Dallas as the new home of the franchise, and the decision was formally announced on March 10. Several reasons were cited for the relocation, including poor attendance during a string of losing seasons, the failure to reach deals for a new arena in either Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and a sexual harassment lawsuit against Green that resulted in his wife threatening to leave him unless he moved the team. The subsequent decision to relocate the franchise to Texas made Green much reviled in Minnesota, where he derisively came to be known as “Norm Greed.”

Another factor that also precipitated the move to Dallas was the fact that the team refused to be moved to the Target Center, where the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves played, due to the fact that the Target Center had advertising rights for Coca-Cola at their arena, whereas the North Stars and the Met Center had Pepsi as their sponsor.

Green’s tenure as owner of the Dallas Stars was short-lived as mounting financial problems resulting from poor management plagued his non-hockey business ventures and he was forced to sell the Dallas Stars to Tom Hicks in 1996.