Stars–Sharks

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. The Stars have won nine division titles in Dallas, two Presidents' Trophies, the Western Conference championship three times, and the Stanley Cup in 1999.

In Their Own Story

The American Airlines Center hums at 7:15 p.m. on a Thursday in February. The ice is fresh, the Zamboni's last pass still glistening under the arena lights. In the Sharks' dressing room, a veteran center tapes his sticks and watches the pre-game broadcast on the small TV mounted above the benches: a replay of a Stars goal from last week, Modano-era footage spliced in by the video coach as a reminder of what this franchise used to be. He turns the TV off. The puck drops. The first shift is a scrum in the neutral zone, sticks snapping, a San Jose defenseman driving the net with his shoulder. The Dallas crowd, a sea of navy and gold, roars. A Sharks winger, eyes low, collects the rebound and fires a one-timer that kisses the crossbar and drops back into play. The Stars' center, jaw set, clears it into the corner. That is the rivalry in a single sequence: no grand narrative, no 1999 Cup, no record-breaking season. Just two teams from the same division, the same conference, the same broad and sun-baked stretch of the American West, meeting on a Thursday night and playing like it matters because, in the arithmetic of a 16-game division schedule, it does.

Reader's Guide

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 (NBA).

Did You Know?

• The Stars have appeared in the Stanley Cup Final five times (1981, 1991, 1999, 2000, and 2020).
• Mike Modano is the highest-scoring player in franchise history.
• Joe Nieuwendyk won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1999.
• Brett Hull became the first Dallas Stars player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009.