In 1990, as a result of slipping attendance, George and Gordon Gund, the owners of the Minnesota North Stars, petitioned the NHL for permission to relocate their team to the San Francisco Bay Area.
As a compromise, the league agreed to award the Gund brothers a new NHL expansion franchise to be located in the Bay Area, which would become the San Jose Sharks.
They sold the North Stars to a consortium consisting of Howard Baldwin, Morris Belzberg, and Norman Green for $31.5 million.
George and Gordon Gund had previously owned the California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons franchise, before merging that team with (and ultimately assuming ownership of) the North Stars in 1978.
In fact, many of those players were under contract with the North Stars the previous year and played for a rival IHL team, the Kalamazoo Wings.