They competed in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Adams Division in the Prince of Wales Conference (1976–1978).

Based at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California; they were the least successful of the six teams added as part of that expansion.

Even after the NHL and CBS parted ways, the league was reluctant to abandon a market as large as the Bay Area.

Minority owner George Gund III persuaded Swig to move the team to his hometown of Cleveland for the 1976–77 season.

Cleveland had been mentioned as a possible NHL city as early as 1935, when the then-struggling Montreal Canadiens considered moving there.

The NHL approved the move to Cleveland on July 14, 1976, but details were not finalized until late August, less than six weeks before the 1976–77 season.

No team had folded in mid-season since the Montreal Wanderers disbanded during the NHL's inaugural season in 1917–18 after their arena burned down.

After a brief slump, general manager Harry Howell pulled off several trades in an attempt to make the team tougher.

It initially paid off, and the Barons knocked off three of the NHL's top teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres in consecutive games in January 1978.

With the Barons barely registering on Cleveland's sports landscape, the Gunds reluctantly decided to write them off as a lost cause and search for a way out.

Years later, Gordon Gund recalled that the decision to disband the team was especially painful given his family's roots in Cleveland.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota North Stars were also having financial difficulties similar to those faced by the Barons,[6] but unlike the Gunds their owners lacked the resources to absorb the losses.

The league was initially cool to the idea, but ultimately concluded that it would be far better for its image to announce a transaction that could be called a "merger" than risk two teams folding.

[7][8] The amalgamated team retained the North Stars' name, colors, and history, with the wealthier Gunds as majority owners.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, who from 1978 to 1991 were owned by Northeast Ohio native Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr., played two designated home games at the Richfield Coliseum in the early 1990s before the arena was demolished and the land added to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

With the North Stars continuing to struggle financially, the Gunds began looking to bring NHL ice hockey back to the Bay Area.

Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalty minutes In their two years in Cleveland, Larry Hirsch[10] served as the Barons' radio play-by-play announcer on WJW.