Oh god, a Dallas Stars fan tries to tell a Minnesotan that how there wasn't interest in the North Stars.
Pretty much, the North Stars were to Minnesota like how the Pacers were to Indiana or how the Cowboys were to Texas. They were the professional team in the national hotbed of the sport. Of course they had good attendance.
http://www.hockeyresearch.com/mfoster/business/nhl_attn.html
The only exceptions were 1988-89 and 1990-91, both when the Twins, who were in a more centrally located stadium in Minneapolis, had good seasons, also noted that the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves had their inagural season in 1989 (A year which the Vikings had a good season), also in a more centrally located stadium in Minneapolis. Also, the winter of 1990 was a very harsh one. And also added to the fact that people just didn't buy tickets in advance, back then. They usually walked up to the ticket booth and bought the tickets, which wasn't recorded as well.
Anyways, our attendance for our new hockey team is still good even though the team couldn't buy an offense from a scalper outside the Xcel energy center. Let's see if Dall-ass can support their team when they institute a salary cap next year and they can't buy an all-star cast of players (Guerin, Niwendyk, Belfour) and fall into obscurity like southern hockey always falls into.
CRR, of the hockey purist class.