Years between a Stanley Cup final and the removal vans.
The state
Minnesota calls itself the State of Hockey and the claim holds up. More players per head come from there than from anywhere else in the country, and the high school tournament fills an arena that professional teams would be pleased with.
The North Stars arrived in 1967 in the first wave of expansion and played at the Met Center in Bloomington.
1991
They finished the regular season with twenty seven wins and thirty nine defeats, and scraped into the play-offs.
Then they beat Chicago, St Louis and Edmonton and reached the final, where Pittsburgh beat them in six.
What happened next
Norm Green had bought the club in 1990. He wanted the Met Center refurbished and linked to the Mall of America, which was being built across the road. The commission that ran the arena refused.
He explored Anaheim, where a new arena was going up, and was asked by the league to leave that city to an expansion team the Walt Disney Company wanted. He went to Dallas instead.
The last match at the Met Center was played in April 1993. The building was demolished in 1994.
After
Minnesota was given an expansion team, the Wild, which began playing in 2000.
Dallas won the Stanley Cup in 1999, with a squad that still contained several players drafted by Minnesota.