Again I'm going mostly on hearsay, but I'm almost positive the Dallas Stars own things like banners, retired numbers, records, whatever from the North Stars days. Going off what llama posted, the league has control over the North Stars trademark/logo itself (i.e. the stuff it can slap on t-shirts and bumper stickers), which is probably for the best. Personally I don't think either franchise should be trotting out in North Stars jerseys at this point. I'm not even sure why Dallas would want to.
The trademark and logo are the only thing where "ownership" is even a meaningful term. Legally speaking, nobody
owns the North Stars records or retired numbers...they are factual statistics, which are legally exempt from any copyright/trademark/IP law.
Now, the NHL might have its own bylaws about how teams are allowed to represent themselves, but from a purely legal standpoint, it's meaningless to ask who "owns" those things. If Minnesota wanted to put up Mike Modano and Bill Masterton banners, there's nothing stopping them. If
Winnipeg wanted to put up those banners, there's nothing stopping them. The only hitch in terms of records would be convincing the NHL to change its canonical version of the statistics to move the 1967-1993 years to be filed under MIN, but again, that's not an ownership issue, that's an internal record-keeping issue. And if the Wild really wanted to, they could just publicize their own version of history and refer to that instead of the NHL's stats in broadcasts.
they don't do throwbacks for the SS games. they tweak the current jerseys and put some idiotic chrome logo on it.
Ugh, don't remind me. What a hideous set of jerseys that was. Let's hope the chrome ******** was just a one-year fad and they try a little harder next year. It seemed like it could well have been Reebok trying to invent a gimmick that would sell to the trends of the LA/ANA market (see also, the prevalence of dull black sweaters in those markets).
Still, there's no reason they can't do real, unique, classy sweater designs for next year's SS games, especially since the word on the street is that there will be significantly fewer outdoor games in total. I'm optimistic, actually, since the Wild are well aware they'll sell ludicrous amounts of merch with a vintage scheme (I'm still pulling hard for a Wild logo in North Stars colors). They haven't really done any stupid modern gimmicks since the original 2000-era sweaters, and in fact they've been steadily moving in the opposite direction.
Worst case let's hope the Wild are at least smart enough to do like New Jersey and just refuse to change their sweaters for the event.