Gunds Get NHL Team in Bay Area

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

Howard Baldwin, former chairman of the Hartford Whalers, and Morris Belzberg, a retired Budget Rent-A-Car executive, acquired the North Stars from Gordon and George Gund for about $38 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.

In addition, the NHL said it might expand by one or two more teams for the 1992-93 season. The league, which said last December that it plans to increase from 21 to 28 teams by the end of the decade but did not intend to add any teams until 1992, set a price tag of $50 million per franchise.

The Gunds owned the North Stars since merging them with their Cleveland Barons in 1978.

The new team will play in the Cow Palace near San Francisco in 1991-92 before moving 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 clubs to double the NHL’s size.

Citing $16 million in losses over the past three years and lack of support from the Twin Cities, 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.

The Gunds were denied the improvements in February.