NHL What If... the North Stars stayed in Minnesota (2013-Present)

[Topherlee2]

Love the North Stars evolution! Fingers cross on you doing the Kansas City Scouts!

[The_Admiral]

The North Stars staying in Minnesota is one of my favorite hypotheticals, because I always saw the potential of a pseudo-America's-Team quality to Minnesota's hockey team, especially if they had had the wherewithal to do what the Dallas Stars did and ostentatiously buy their way into contention/a Stanley Cup. The '99 team was a veritable who's-who of hockey with Modano, Brett Hull, Belfour, and a whole bunch of other not-insignificant names, but it sort of gets overshadowed because of the stifling Hitchpuck and the 2002 Red Wings outbuying them with Luc Robitaille, Dominik Hasek, Chris Chelios, and also Brett Hull. 

 

Anyway, this is the scenic route to saying that my theory is that the ST^RS stuff, an obvious runway to a San Francisco Anaheim Dallas relocation, surely would have fallen by the wayside sooner rather than later if the Minnesota North Stars had been successfully rescued from Norm Greed, and certainly wouldn't have had NORTH placed above it at equal size. I've always thought we would have seen the North Stars assert themselves and the place of Minnesota in U.S. hockey by contriving a vintage aesthetic that would be anachronistic to the Stars themselves but make sense in terms of some Minnesotan pond-hockey mythos. The current team whose name we won't use has nibbled around the edges of that but has never been able to fully commit to any sort of branding. 

 

I am intrigued by the current starred-i Minnesota script finding some use with the North Stars, but overall, no, porting over all the bad things about the Dallas Stars, right down to Scenery Bear taking the place of Mooterus, doesn't feel like a likely alternate timeline to me.

[Eastport76]

Interesting work! I would love to see Hamilton Tigers if they never folded.

[Ridleylash]

I have to agree with Admiral in that the North Stars probably wouldn't have gone down the exact same route Dallas' branding did. I think the history as far as jerseys go probably stays roughly the same up until the early '00s, where I'd see them redesigning back into a much more traditional and vintage aesthetic to tie back into being a true-blue heritage franchise, probably also going back to their original colors as well.

 

Minnesota is a huge traditional place for hockey, so the North Stars, had they been rescued from Norm Green and his Texas ambitions, would be wise to lean into that heritage and history by keeping their look much more reserved and classical then trying too hard to be modern and hip (outside of the '90's where many teams from the same era as the Stars went really hard into being modern and hip). I think the star-cut would be as far as they would probably go, personally.

 

I'd also agree that they'd most likely drop the text from the logo altogether and just have the star by itself, rather then adding more text onto the logo. Having "NORTH STARS" and the logo gets cluttered from a distance and ends up hurting the logo more then helping it.

[The_Admiral]

I think they would have gone back to the N-Star by popular demand. Do we have any primary-source stuff on how the black/green ST^RS stuff was received in the summer of '91? Pretty sure I remember reading an article where fans were already on relocation alert about it while Norm Greed insisted it was just "Stars" for short like "Wings" or "Leafs" -- you know, those famously shortened-nickname-on-their-logo Toronto Maple Leafs. 

 

My North Stars concept where I laid all this out is somewhere in the archives, I think, I'll see if I can dig it out.

[Blindsay]

A question: what becomes of the wild? Will they go to Dallas instead? ( If so I recommend the Dallas Rodeo for the team name) Good to see this series Back!

[The_Admiral]

Dallas and Denver surely would have made their way into the league via expansion if there had been no '90s relocations, with Dallas coming in as soon as possible. Phoenix and Miami probably would have come in later with shovels in the ground for arenas, and we probably wouldn't have heard much about Raleigh, which was a double-fallback for Auburn Hills and Columbus.

[MilSox]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

I think they would have gone back to the N-Star by popular demand. Do we have any primary-source stuff on how the black/green ST^RS stuff was received in the summer of '91? Pretty sure I remember reading an article where fans were already on relocation alert about it while Norm Greed insisted it was just "Stars" for short like "Wings" or "Leafs" -- you know, those famously shortened-nickname-on-their-logo Toronto Maple Leafs. 

 

My North Stars concept where I laid all this out is somewhere in the archives, I think, I'll see if I can dig it out.

 

I think it would be very similar to hthe situation with the BiG in Milwaukee. Or the buffalo sword crest in Buffalo. They'd have tried to update their brand in the mid 90s. But when throwback jerseys became trendy in the 2000s, popular demand would have necessitated that the N-Star be revived 

[SFGiants58]

Just now, NicDB said:

 

I think it would be very similar to hthe situation with the BiG in Milwaukee. Or the buffalo sword crest in Buffalo. They'd have tried to update their brand in the mid 90s. But when throwback jerseys became trendy in the 2000s, popular demand would have necessitated that the N-Star be revived 

 

The big question would be whether it returned as kelly/yellow-gold, forest/yellow-gold, or kelly/yellow-gold/black. My hope would be that they'd dump black in favor of emulating that powerhouse of Minnesota high school hockey, Edina!

 

 

Stick an updated N-star on these sweaters and you'd have the best possible design for the North Stars.

[Morgan33]

I was excited when I saw you were doing the North Stars because they had an interesting uniform history even with the move to Dallas.  Unfortunately, this alternate jersey history misses the mark for a few reasons.

 

1)  Where is the original ST^RS jersey with the lighter green?  Would the Stars have even bothered to darken it to Forest green in their second season without the move?

 

2)  Okay, the team follows the same uniform trajectory as the Dallas Stars.  Aside from glossing over the most potentially interesting period of this hypothetical I guess that's fine.  But why not at least show us what the uniforms would look like without the 'Dallas' wordmark and Texas shoulder-patches?

 

3) There is zero need to add the word "North" to the St^rs logo because the Star is already italicized to point north and yes, this was intentionally done.  This is something that is often forgotten in the "Norm Greed made the change in uniforms to prepare for an eventual move" narrative but in reality Norm had nothing to do with the uniform change and the ST^RS logo existed well before there were rumblings of a move.  The change was made solely to capitalize on what the L.A. Kings were doing at the time to sell more merchandise.  Black was the trendy uniform base in the early 90's.

That being said, I think you nailed the RBK era set and the shoulder patch is exactly what I'd imagine them using had they remained in Minnesota.  It's also cool that the Wild's bear-head logo can absolutely work as a North Stars logo and it'd make perfect sense to place it on the Mooterus template.  Same thing goes with the Minnesota script and I like that it hints at a return to their late 80's/early 90's look with the N-Star.  I hope this doesn't sound overly critical as I think this alternate history has some definite potential.

[The_Admiral]

27 minutes ago, Morgo said:

the ST^RS logo existed well before there were rumblings of a move

 

I'm not so sure. It debuted as a secondary by at least 1990 (I remember it on the Met Center ice in the '91 Finals). The Gunds had already been trying to move the team to the Bay Area for some time, and Norm had his eyes on Anaheim up until the expansion was approved instead. Ultimately, this would have been a case where perception was reality and ST^RS would have been associated with de-Minnesotaing the team, and untenable in any situation where the Stars were saved from relocation at the eleventh hour.

[chcarlson23]

4 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

The big question would be whether it returned as kelly/yellow-gold, forest/yellow-gold, or kelly/yellow-gold/black. My hope would be that they'd dump black in favor of emulating that powerhouse of Minnesota high school hockey, Edina!

 

 

Stick an updated N-star on these sweaters and you'd have the best possible design for the North Stars.

Edina(gross)-style jerseys, yes

Updated N-Star, no

 

There’s no need to update that logo. Maybe taking away the drop shadow, but maybe that’s about it. 

[The_Admiral]

This was the neo-retro update I saw them doing, apologies for the threadjack but in Odyssey of the Mind we were taught to piggyback:

 

On 8/2/2018 at 9:56 PM, the admiral said:

 

That's all I had in mind: going back to an earlier version and adding a serif on the bottom to make it a little sturdier. By thickening up the Yellowtail brush-script font and skewing it to the left, I came up with a script that looks like it might have been hand-painted on the sign of a summer camp up north or something.

 

 

The metallic gold would be used very sparingly. Basically the stars and that's it.

[SFGiants58]

Yeah, I'd like a kelly/yellow-gold version of what Admiral posted there. My one condition would be to engineer the set in a way that white and gold never "bled" together by keeping the elements separate. No drop shadows, no gold outlines on white lettering, no white outlines on the gold stars (but a green outline on the star, when placed on a white background), and no stripes touching each other. That way, you don't need black. 

 

The black should never come back for neo-retro North Stars designs. It made the already awful post-Barons merger uniforms even worse.

[Section30]

19 hours ago, the admiral said:

Do we have any primary-source stuff on how the black/green ST^RS stuff was received in the summer of '91? Pretty sure I remember reading an article where fans were already on relocation alert about it while Norm Greed insisted it was just "Stars" for short like "Wings" or "Leafs" -- you know, those famously shortened-nickname-on-their-logo Toronto Maple Leafs. 

 

I don't have any primary sources about the reception of the ST^RS stuff, but having grown up around die hard North Stars fans I can tell you that it is not well liked.

 

My mom has a lot of North Stars memorabilia so sometimes people would see a puck or something with the ST^RS logo on it and everyone kinda said the same thing which was that as soon as they switched to that logo they all knew that the team was moving. I'm sure that is a big reason why the look isn't nearly as beloved by the locals as the N Star logo jerseys which are seen all over, compared to the ST^RS jerseys which I can probably count on one hand how many times I've seen in public.

[Topherlee2]

12 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Yeah, I'd like a kelly/yellow-gold version of what Admiral posted there. My one condition would be to engineer the set in a way that white and gold never "bled" together by keeping the elements separate. No drop shadows, no gold outlines on white lettering, no white outlines on the gold stars (but a green outline on the star, when placed on a white background), and no stripes touching each other. That way, you don't need black. 

 

The black should never come back for neo-retro North Stars designs. It made the already awful post-Barons merger uniforms even worse.

@SFGiants58 Maybe we'll see something like this in a future NHL Defunct Team project from you in the future? (Shrugs shoulders)

[seasaltvanilla]

Yeah I've never seen Minnesota Stars apparel or merchandise, it's all North Star.

[TheLAKnight]

Did not expect to see this much discussion, but the it is the North Stars after all.

 

The following set, I imagined would have been unveiled in 2013, the same year IRL that Dallas switched back to green and Minnesota released their more traditional white jersey. Based on comments from @the admiral, @DastardlyRidleylash, and @Morgo, it's probably more likely that this change or something similar would have happened in 2010 or even earlier.

 

Only change between the two sets in the white yoke on the first green jersey.

 

 

 

The shoulder logo is a roundel with the N in the middle, a design which both Dallas and Minnesota have employed.

 

 

Other potential directions to start from will be making the switch back to the N star earlier (late 1990s) or starting in 1991 ignoring the ST^RS look.  

[SFGiants58]

I like this a lot more, especially the home version without the white yoke! My big suggestion would be to keep yellow and white from touching each other in the white jersey's striping and adding a green border to the yellow star on the white sweater as well. 

[TheLAKnight]

2 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I like this a lot more, especially the home version without the white yoke! My big suggestion would be to keep yellow and white from touching each other in the white jersey's striping and adding a green border to the yellow star on the white sweater as well. 

 

Ideally, I wouldn't put the yellow and white next to each other. Minnesota was lousy with yellow-on-white throughout their history. I modeled this set on the 1979 design, but there's definitely a way to avoid it in a redesign.

 

Despite the consistency between the logos, the yellow star needs a border.