 However, the Gunds were the merged team's principal owners, and the North Stars assumed the Barons' place in the Adams Division in order to balance out the divisions.The merger brought with it a number of talented players, and the North Stars were revived—they reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1981, where they lost in five games to the New York Islanders.However, by the early 1990s, declining attendance and the inability to secure a new downtown revenue-generating arena led ownership to request permission to move the team to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990.