Dallas Stars  The Dallas Stars are a professional ice hockey team based in Dallas. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division of the Western Conference. The team was founded during the 1967 NHL expansion as the Minnesota North Stars, based in Bloomington, Minnesota. Before the beginning of 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. Ultimately, the franchise relocated to Dallas for the 1993–94 NHL season. The Stars played out of Reunion Arena from their relocation until 2001, when the team moved less than 1.5 miles into the American Airlines Center. The Stars have won eight division titles in Dallas, two Presidents' Trophies as the top regular season team in the league, the Western Conference championship twice, and in 1998–99, the Stanley Cup. Joe Nieuwendyk won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs that year. 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. In 2010, brothers Derian and Kevin Hatcher were inducted to the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. The Minnesota North Stars began play in 1967 as part of the league's six-team expansion. Home games were played at the newly constructed Metropolitan Sports Center ("Met Center") in Bloomington, Minnesota. Initially successful both on the ice and at the gate, the North Stars fell victim to financial problems after several poor seasons in the mid-1970s. In 1978, the North Stars merged with the Cleveland Barons (formerly the California Golden Seals), owned by George III and Gordon Gund. With both teams on the verge of folding, the league permitted the two failing franchises to merge. The merged team continued as the Minnesota North Stars, while the Seals/Barons franchise records were retired. However, the Gunds were the merged team's principal owners, and the North Stars assumed the Barons' place in the Adams Division in order to balance out the divisions. The merger brought with it a number of talented players, and the North Stars were revived—they reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1981, where they lost in five games to the New York Islanders. However, by the early 1990s, declining attendance and the inability to secure a new downtown revenue-generating arena led ownership to request permission to move the team to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990.