The North Stars played their home games at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, and the team's colors for most of its history were green, yellow, gold and white.

On March 11, 1965, NHL President Clarence Campbell announced that the league would expand to 12 teams from six by creating a new six-team division for the 1967–68 season.

[1] In response to the announcement, a partnership of nine men, led by Walter Bush, Jr., Robert Ridder, and John Driscoll, was formed to seek a franchise for the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

[7] The North Stars achieved success in their first year of existence by finishing fourth in the West Division with a record of 27–32–15 and advancing to the playoffs.

The first Stars team also included high-scoring winger Bill Goldsworthy and other quality players such as Barry Gibbs, Jude Drouin, J. P. Parise, Danny Grant, Lou Nanne, Tom Reid and Dennis Hextall.

[16] Despite making a good account of themselves on the ice, insurmountable financial difficulties forced the Fighting Saints to fold midway through their fourth season.

The recently retired Nanne was named general manager, and some of the Barons players – notably goaltender Gilles Meloche and forwards Al MacAdam and Mike Fidler – bolstered Minnesota's lineup.

Furthermore, Minnesota had drafted Bobby Smith, who went on to win the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL's top rookie that year, and Steve Payne, who recorded 42 goals in his second campaign in 1979–80.

On January 7, 1980, Minnesota was scheduled to play the Philadelphia Flyers, who came to Bloomington with the NHL's and major league sports’ longest undefeated streak, a 35-game run of 25 wins and 10 ties.

[18] An all-time record Met Center crowd of 15,962 squeezed into the arena, which remained the highest total in all 26 seasons of the North Stars franchise.

In the quarterfinals of the 1980 playoffs, the North Stars upset the four-time defending champion Montreal Canadiens in seven games before bowing out to Philadelphia in the next round.

With the addition of new players such as Minnesota native and 1980 Olympian Neal Broten and sniper Dino Ciccarelli, the North Stars had five straight winning seasons starting in 1979–80, which included back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup semifinals, against the Flyers in 1980 and against the Calgary Flames in 1981.

Fueled by an eight-goal second period, and a four-goal, seven-point night by Bobby Smith, the North Stars scored the most goals in an NHL game since 1944 in a 15–2 win.

Early in the season, Bobby Smith was traded to the Montreal Canadiens for a pair of defense-minded forwards, Keith Acton and Mark Napier.

A loss to the Calgary Flames coupled with the Leafs' win over the Red Wings not only kept the North Stars out of the playoffs, but also with the worst record in the league.

Chronic attendance problems led the owners to threaten to move the club to the San Francisco Bay Area, against the league's wishes.

[22] The NHL instituted a compromise for the 1990–91 season whereby the Gund brothers were awarded an expansion team in the Bay Area, the San Jose Sharks, that would receive players from Minnesota via a dispersal draft with the North Stars.

A group previously petitioning for an NHL team in the Bay Area, led by Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg, bought the North Stars as part of the deal.

By 1992, Norman Green was arranging a deal to turn the team into the Los Angeles Stars, playing at a new arena (which is now the Honda Center) under construction in Anaheim, California.

[25] Several reasons were cited for the relocation, including poor attendance during a string of losing seasons, the failure to reach deals for a new arena in either Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and a sexual harassment lawsuit against Green that resulted in his wife threatening to leave him unless he moved the team.

[31] Due to mounting financial problems resulting from poor management of his non-hockey business ventures, Green only kept the Stars for three more years before selling them to Tom Hicks in 1996.

On December 17, 2000, the Wild hosted the Dallas Stars in the latter's first visit to Minnesota since the relocation (excluding the aforementioned neutral-site game at Target Center in 1993).

KITN (now WFTC) televised North Stars games with Frank Mazzocco on play-by-play with color commentators Fred Barrett, Roger Buxton, and Wally Shaver from the 1984–85 through 1986–87 seasons.

The 1987–88 season saw North Stars' games telecast over Saint Cloud-based UHF station KXLI (with Kurtz on play-by-play and former Islander goalie Glenn "Chico" Resch on color).

Shaver's partners on KSTP were Russ Small, Ted Robinson, and (during the last three seasons) former Dallas Stars announcer Ralph Strangis.

Shaver is a ten-time Minnesota Sportscaster of the Year and, as the 1993 Foster Hewitt Memorial Award-winner, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

[39] It was on the night of the Stars' final game at Joe Louis Arena versus the Detroit Red Wings that Shaver first shared the broadcast booth with his son, Wally, who is the current Gopher hockey radio announcer.

Although Strangis had a great deal of broadcast experience, his tryout as color commentator on the Minnesota North Stars radio network was a longshot; other better-known sportscasters received more air time during the auditioning process.

After three more seasons as color commentator (teaming with Mike Fornes), Strangis migrated to the play-by-play mic, effectively cementing his status as the "Voice of the Stars."

He was reunited with Tom Reid, who he previously worked with while calling games for the North Stars as well as University of Minnesota and Michigan State hockey broadcasts.