1993 Stanley Cup Game 6 vs New York Rangers

Lore & Background

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.

In Their Own Story

The Garden was a cathedral of noise. Forty thousand voices shook the glass as the Stars' bench huddled in the final period, Modano's stick tapping the ice in a metronome rhythm, Belfour's mask fogged with breath and adrenaline. The Rangers' bench was a tableau of exhaustion—Leetch's shoulders heaving, Gartner's jaw set in that familiar grimace. A faceoff in the Rangers' zone. The puck drops. Modano wins it clean, feeds the slot, and the play explodes into the crease. Belfour, watching from the bench, already knows. He knows because he has been in this crease for forty-two minutes and has not let one through. The puck caroms off a Rangers glove, off the ice, off a Stars skate, and dies at his feet. The Garden erupts—not in celebration, but in the stunned, disbelieving roar of a city watching its dream slip through its fingers one more time. Modano lifts his stick. Belfour peels off his mask. The Cup is theirs. Again.

Reader's Guide

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 (1981, 1991, 1999, 2000, and 2020).

Did You Know?

• 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
• Five further players and one coach have since been inducted into the Hall of Fame.