Welcome to What If Week here at Gone Puck Wild. With the summer doldrums in full effect, and not much happening on the Kaprizov or Rossi fronts, we are going to dive into the realm of speculation and alternative history to ponder what might have happened if things had gone slightly different in the world of Minnesota hockey. First up, we rewind the clock to a previous organization, a previous century, and the last time a Minnesota hockey team was in the Stanley Cup Final.
It’s 1991. The Minnesota North Stars are finishing up their first season under new ownership. Ownership brought on to keep them from going to San Jose. Dodged that bullet, they did. Despite a regular season that saw them win just 27 games, they somehow made it into the playoffs.
Their reward for limping into the postseason was a match-up with the Chicago Blackhawks, a team that finished with a whopping 38 more points than them in the regular season. So, of course the North Stars knocked them out in the first round in six games. Waiting in the second round was the St. Louis Blues, who had 105 points in the regular season, coming off of a seven-game series against the Red Wings.
Perhaps they were exhausted from that match-up because the North Stars advanced once again in six games. Cool, it gets easier from there, right? Nope. In the Western Conference Final, they got to face the defending Stanley Cup Champion’s, the Edmonton Oilers. Well, Minnesota kicked the Oilers’ dynasty in the grave by winning the series in five games.
The Cinderella run was on to the Stanley Cup Final where they faced the Pittsburgh Penguins. Cool. Nothing like taking on a team that had 8 future hall-of-fame players in the line-up (the number will grow to 9 if Jaromir Jagr ever stops playing hockey). With Mario Lemieux back in the line-up (he had only played 26 regular season games) the Penguins had knocked off the Devils, Capitals, and Bruins to make it to their first Stanley Cup Final.
It was a match-up of offense (Pittsburgh had finished second in the league in goals scored with 342 despite not having Lemieux for most of the season) against defense (Minnesota finished 10th in goals against).
Minnesota took Game 1 in Pittsburgh as Neal Broten scored twice in the 5-4 win. The Penguins bounced back in Game 2 with a 4-1 win as Tom Barrasso stopped 39 shots. Jon Casey was the hero in Game 3 as he made 29 saves on the way to a 3-1 Minnesota win. Lemieux missed the game with back issues and was questionable heading into Game 4, which was also to be played at the Met Center.
With a 2-1 series lead, and an 8-1 record at home during the playoffs, the North Stars had a chance to seize the series by the throat. To date, only one team had ever overcome a 3-1 series deficit in the Stanley Cup Final - the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs. Even with two of the final three games scheduled to take place in Pittsburgh, one would think that the North Stars could eek out a win at some point to raise their first Stanley Cup if they could keep the good times rolling at home with a victory.
So, let’s assume they do that. Casey has another strong game, Broten finds the net a few times and the North Stars win Game 4. Maybe they lose Game 5 in Pittsburgh, but then take Game 6 at home to win the Cup. Glorious.
As the ticker tape flutters through the air in downtown Minneapolis, new owner Norm Green, overcome with joy (and with dollar bill signs in his eyes) announces that he’s come to an agreement with Minnesota Sports Facility Commission to move downtown to the Target Center despite any lingering issues in regards to official soda licensing deals. The announcement drives up corporate interest and season ticket sales. With money flowing in, the North Stars nab Adam Graves off of the free agent market.
He brings them some much needed offense and they carry their success into many years of competitive play before the Red Wings dynasty eventually takes them down. Any lingering thoughts of relocating fade from Green’s mind. Sure he gets divorced, but he’s treated as a savior for keeping the franchise in the State of Hockey.
Meanwhile, in Dallas, the powers that be shift their focus a little further north and start negotiating with the Winnipeg Jets to relocate to The Big D. The Canadian owners decide it’s a better bet than the desert and spare NHL fans decades of Gary Bettman’s quest to make hockey work in Arizona so they relocate the Jets to Dallas instead of Phoenix.
The Dallas Chupacabras enjoy moderate success, but have to look on as Minnesota wins their second Stanley Cup in 1999. Meanwhile, in Arizona, a young kid by the name of Auston Matthews, with no local hockey team to follow, takes up baseball instead. He has a moderately successful career before blowing out his elbow during his junior season at Arizona State. With his baseball career behind him he becomes a moderately successful vice-president at a local bank.
In 2016, the Toronto Maple Leafs, with no Matthews to select with their top overall pick, draft Matthew Tkachuk with the first pick of the draft, surprising everyone. A few seasons later, the young American scores the game-winning goal in Game 7 of their opening round series against the Boston Bruins and the Leafs go on to win the Stanley Cup. It was “4-1!” never becomes a phrase hockey fans use to annoy their Toronto fans.
Toronto goes on to enjoy a long and fruitful playoff run that erases a lot of joy from the other 31 fan bases. Minnesota settles into a nice competitive groove that keeps them out of the top 10 in drafting, but also keeps them from feeling the need to sign anyone to long, restrictive contracts that hamper the team’s ability to make other moves for almost a decade.
Sadly, as Minnesota fans know, none of that ever happened. Instead, the Penguins silenced a raucous crowd with three goals inside the first three minutes of Game 4. The North Stars fought back to get within 4-3, but a poorly executed five-minute power play in the final moments of the game was erased by a dubious interference call on Casey. The Penguins held on to even the series. They then took the next two games, and raised the Stanley Cup after an 8-0 demolition in Game 6.
From there, the downward spiral continued and within two years, the North Stars were eating BBQ and driving pick-up trucks in Texas while NHL hockey disappeared from hockey for the rest of the century.
While we went on a nice little fever dream there for awhile, the truth is that a Stanley Cup for the Minnesota North Stars probably doesn’t drastically alter the future. It doesn’t solve the fact that they had a middling roster not built for sustained success, or that Norm Green was always going to chase the relocation path whether it was in Anaheim or Dallas. Nor would it have provided a realistic fix for the stadium situation in the Twin Cities. The North Stars had to leave for the Wild to eventually build in St. Paul.
It would have been interesting to see if a Stanley Cup would have been enough for the ownership group to leave the history and the records in Minneapolis when they absconded to Dallas. Taking scoring records and win-loss records is one thing, but hanging a Stanley Cup banner in a building that you never played a game in is a bit much on the stolen pride spectrum.
Things played out how they did. Some may argue that in the long run, both sides came out victorious, but it is always interesting to think about what could have been had one game, or even one play gone different.