S.F. Bay Area Receives NHL Franchise

The San Francisco Bay Area got an NHL franchise and the Minnesota North Stars got new owners in a deal approved today by the league’s Board of Governors.

As part of the agreement, Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg bought the North Stars from Gordon and George Gund for about $31.5 million. In turn, the Gunds were given a Bay Area franchise for 1991-92--the league’s first expansion since four teams from the World Hockey Assn. were admitted in 1979. One of those WHA teams was the Hartford Whalers, whom Baldwin helped found in 1972.

The Gunds, who have owned the North Stars since they merged their Cleveland Barons with the Minnesota team in 1978, will house their new club in the Cow Palace near San Francisco in 1991-92 before moving it to a new arena in San Jose the next season.

It will be the first Bay Area hockey team since the California Seals--owned partly by the Gunds--left Oakland for Cleveland in 1976. The Seals were part of the league’s first expansion in 1967, when six teams, including the North Stars, joined the original six teams to double the NHL’s size.

The Gunds’ expansion franchise will begin play one year earlier than the NHL had proposed last December, when the league voted to grow from 21 to 28 teams in the 1990s.

Citing $16 million in losses over the last three years and lack of support from the Twin Cities community, the Gunds announced on Jan. 30 that they would ask the NHL for permission to move to the Bay Area unless they could get $15 million in improvements to the Met Center.

When they were denied the improvements in February, the Gunds said they would move the club unless they could sell it to a group that would keep it in Minnesota. At the time, they said the asking price would be at least $50 million--equal to the price tag the NHL has put on its expansion franchises.

Baldwin, the Whalers’ chairman for 16 years until he was bought out in Richard Gordon’s 1988 takeover, has been involved in the film and yogurt industries the last two years. He and Belzberg said they held the rights to an expansion franchise for San Jose and, therefore, had an advantage over other suitors for the North Stars.

He and Belzberg, a retired Budget Rent-A-Car executive, agreed to terms with the Gunds last Wednesday.

The Board of Governors discussed the deal for almost 10 hours Tuesday and another six hours today before approving the transaction.