EPISODE 337: The 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars - With Kevin Allenspach

Veteran Minnesota sportswriter Kevin Allenspach (Mirage of Destiny: The Story of the 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars) takes to the ice with us this week, as we look back at one of the most improbable playoff runs in NHL history - one that came the closest to giving the self-professed "State of Hockey" its first Stanley Cup championship - a title that still eludes the region to this day.

Throughout much of the 1990-91 season, the Minnesota North Stars were among the worst-performing clubs in the National Hockey League - and dead last at the box office. Rumors of the team's possible sale to new owners of the team were swirling, and the threat of relocation was real.

Distractions notwithstanding, the North Stars gritted their way into the playoffs, winning only 27 of 80 regular-season games. And against all odds, they upset both the Presidents' Trophy-winning Chicago Blackhawks and the regular season's second-best St. Louis Blues in the first two rounds - followed by a dispatching of the defending Stanley Cup Champion Edmonton Oilers in the Campbell Conference Finals.

Despite ultimately losing the Stanley Cup Finals to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the underdog North Stars managed to capture the imagination of Twin Cities hockey fans (not to mention a certain club public relations intern) during their unexpected postseason run - enough to spark renewed hope for the franchise's future.

Allenspach, of course, tells us otherwise - culminating in the team's relocation to Dallas in 1993.

Mirage of Destiny: The Story of the 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars - buy book here

EPISODE 259: Howard Baldwin Returns!

Hollywood film producer (Ray; The Game of Their Lives; Sudden Death) and original New England/Hartford Whalers founder/owner Howard Baldwin (Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood) returns after a three-year absence to help fill in some of the gaps left over from Episode 100, and to dish on "new" territory from his hard-to-believe career, including:

• The contagious indefatigable spirit of WHA founder Dennis Murphy

• Who really paid for Bobby Hull's headline-grabbing contract (and who didn't)

• How Houston and Cincinnati went from being "in" the June 1978 WHA-NHL "merger," to being "out" of the senior league's "expansion" a year later

• The early 1990s saga of the HC CSKA Moscow "Red Army" team (aka the "Russian Penguins")

• Why the way to San Jose stopped first in Pittsburgh and then Minnesota; AND

• The World Football League's (almost) "Boston Bulls"

Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood - buy here

“Red Penguins” - streaming video from Amazon Prime Video here

EPISODE 225: The Cleveland Barons - With Gary Webster

We close the gap between our previous explorations of the National Hockey League's former California Golden Seals and Minnesota North Stars with a deep dive into the two-year curiosity that bridged between them - the unforgettably forgettable Cleveland Barons.

Episode 111 guest and WKKY-FM/Geneva (OH) radio jock Gary Webster ("The NHL's Mistake By the Lake: A History of the Cleveland Barons") returns the 'cast - this time to go deep into the baffling prelude, chaotic operations, and historically debatable termination/relocation of a franchise that was seemingly snake bitten even before its hasty arrival in Northeastern Ohio in the summer of 1976.

Named for a decades-old, nine-time minor league AHL championship-winning team that preceded it until 1973 - which itself had been replaced by the struggling "major league" Crusaders of the wobbly World Hockey Association - the Barons came close to folding in both of its two NHL seasons, despite the frantic efforts of two separate ownership groups, a brand-new state-of-the-art arena, and at least one league bailout.

Along the way, attendance was meager, media coverage was scant, and on-ice play was woeful - the perfect ingredients for an episode sure to please!

The NHL’s Mistake By the Lake: A History of the Cleveland Barons - buy book here

EPISODE 167: The “Down Goes Brown” History of the NHL – With Sean McIndoe

While we ruminate on what a potential resumption of the National Hockey League’s delayed 2020 regular season (and playoffs) might look like in the months ahead, we pause to look back at the rich, but altogether confounding history of the world’s premier pro hockey circuit with Down Goes Brown blog scribe and Athletic columnist Sean McIndoe (The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL: The World's Most Beautiful Sport, the World's Most Ridiculous League).

Over its often-illogical 103-year history, the NHL has proven to be – as the dust jacket to McIndoe’s loving, but irreverent book intimates – a league that often can't seem to get out of its own way:

“No matter how long you've been a hockey fan, you know that sinking feeling that maybe – just maybe – some of the people in charge here don't actually know what they're doing.  And at some point, you've probably wondered – has it always been this way? The short answer is yes.  As for the longer answer, well, that's this book.”

McIndoe helps us cheat-sheet through some of the league’s defining historical inflection points, including:

• The myth of the “Original Six” – the hallowed group of supposedly foundational franchises cemented during WWII-era 1942 – that conveniently ignores 15 teams that preceded them in the league’s first 25 years of existence;

• 1967’s “Great Expansion” – when the NHL doubled its franchise count from six to twelve, including preemptive strikes against the Western Hockey League with new teams in Los Angeles (Kings) and Oakland (Seals);

• The 1979 “merger” with the pesky World Hockey Association – which absorbed only four of the challenger’s seven remaining clubs; AND

• Comical expansion/relocation follies in Cleveland, Kansas City, Denver, and Atlanta (twice).

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

The “Down Goes Brown” History of the NHL: The World’s Most Beautiful Sport; The World’s Most Ridiculous League - buy book here

EPISODE #53: NHL Hockey’s Minnesota North Stars with Author Adam Raider

In this week’s episode, we skate back to the National Hockey League’s 1967 “Great Expansion,” when the league ambitiously doubled in size from its “Original Six” to incorporate a half-dozen new franchises – including the seemingly most obvious and overdue market of all: the hockey-mad state of Minnesota and its cultural epicenter, Minneapolis-St.Paul. 

With a skilled management team led by amateur hockey pioneer Walter Bush, the Minnesota North Stars fielded a team-minded and quickly respectable squad of NHL journeymen, castoffs and amateurs that immediately won the hearts of the hometown Met Center faithful. 

By the mid-1970s, however, the North Stars had fallen on hard times, with perennially poor records and few playoff berths – until 1978, when, in an unprecedented arrangement, Cleveland Barons (née California Golden Seals) franchise owner-brothers Gordon and George Gund acquired the team and merged them.  Bolstered by an immediate influx of quality Barons like goaltender Gilles Meloche and forwards Al MacAdam and Mike Fidler – plus savvy acquisitions and draft picks like eventual Calder Cup-winning forward Bobby Smith, 1980 US Olympian (and Minnesota native) Neal Broten, and future Hall of Famer Dino Ciccarelli – the North Stars reeled off five straight winning seasons and reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1980-81.

Author Adam Raider (Frozen in Time: A Minnesota North Stars History) joins the show to recount the club’s rise to championship contention, and subsequent relapse in the later 1980s/early 1990s – that ultimately saw: the Gunds trade for rights to a San Jose expansion franchise; Calgary Flames owner Norman Green opportunistically swap his interests for the North Stars; and, despite the addition of Mike Modano and a 1991 Stanley Cup Finals run, Green achieve villainy status (“Norm Sucks!”) by moving the team to Dallas in 1993.

If you are a fan of today’s NHL Minnesota Wild, Dallas Stars or even San Jose Sharks, the story of the North Stars is an important part of your hockey education!

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Frozen in Time: A Minnesota North Stars History - buy book here