Twenty-five years ago, the Minnesota North Stars hockey organization, a 1967 NHL expansion team, migrated from Bloomington, Minn., where they had played since 1967 to Dallas. This dramatic shift in the NHL brought the south a brand new kind of game and with it, an old northern pastime.

Prior to 1993, Minnesota North Stars owner Norman Green made the controversial decision of moving the North Stars to Dallas, which shook the entire NHL to its very foundation. This act deprived the state of Minnesota – widely known as “The State of Hockey” – of a professional team for seven years and changed the city of Dallas forever.

After the North Stars moved to Dallas, they were re-branded as simply the Stars. The addition of an NHL team in Texas was a game-changer and sparked a period of excitement across high schools in Texas. Coppell was no exception and the CHS hockey team is a result of this.

Four years later, in 1997, the original four high school hockey teams in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were founded: Plano, Southlake Carroll, Dallas Jesuit and Coppell. By the end of the 2003 season, the hockey team returned home from the Texas Amateur Hockey Association State Championship (TAHA) with the title, marking the first and only time the hockey team has ever secured a state championship win.

This past season, the hockey team qualified for the playoffs but lost in the first round to Allen, who went on to win the Varsity Silver Division Championship.

“We finished fourth last year and second over the summer,” CHS varsity forward junior Trevor Dame said. “We’ve got a good team and I think we’re all hoping we can go a bit further this year.”

For the last several years, the hockey team has registered in the AT&T Metroplex High School Hockey League, which is made up of eight different high school varsity hockey teams from around the Metroplex.

In 2016, Coppell returned home from the finals as summer league champions, but due to a loss of several graduated players last season, underclassmen were left behind to continue the Coppell hockey legacy that was left behind by the graduates.

“Last year we lost something like fourteen seniors, so it was sort of a rebuilding year,” head coach Chris Shakesby said. “But those younger kids definitely exceeded our expectations. This year, you can expect even more growth out of the team and a deep playoff run.”

Although it has been 15 years since its last TAHA state championship, the hockey team is coasting into this season with high hopes.