WORCESTER — There was a time last Friday afternoon in Kalamazoo, Michigan, when Cliff Rucker wondered if all the time, money and energy he had expended on bringing an ECHL expansion franchise here had been wasted.

“I was in the process of making my presentation to the Board of Governors,” Rucker said on Monday, “and there was no reaction. I even tried throwing a little humor in with it, and nothing. Everyone just sat there stone-faced. When I finished, there were no questions.

“So I didn’t know what to expect.”

It only took about 15 minutes for Rucker to find out how his presentation was received and it came in the news of a unanimous approval for Worcester’s membership in the ECHL. The results of that vote were officially announced during a press conference on Monday at the DCU Center, which will be the team’s home beginning in 2017-18.

“Cliff’s presentation was very good, very complete,” ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna said. “He covered all the relevant topics, and that’s why there were no questions.”

League members had been kept up to speed on Rucker’s plans as the process of preparing the application went along, McKenna added, so that also worked in his favor at the meeting.

The price of Rucker’s expansion franchise was not announced at the press conference. One source estimated that his total costs in joining the league and getting the franchise up and running for a 2017-18 puck drop could be as much as $5 million.

While the DCU Center will not have to make permanent ice until the autumn of 2017, the new ECHL team is opening for business almost immediately. Rucker announced his first hire, President and General Manager Toby O’Brien, and its first event, a free Fanfest at the DCU Center on April 3.

O’Brien will do all the hiring for the new staff including on the business side. He said he has already begun to put together a list of possible coaching candidates but does not expect to hire one until the spring of 2017.

The team has not announced a nickname yet and expects to do that at the Fanfest. Rucker said Monday that the name is not quite 100 percent settled on, but close to it.

The ECHL team will occupy office space in the DCU Center, taking over the second-floor digs formerly occupied by the AHL Sharks. The new team will also move into the downstairs dressing room, coaches’ offices and training facilities the Sharks and IceCats used.

The corporate name of the ECHL team, Worcester Pro Hockey, includes the abbreviation “HC,” which is short for Hockey Club. That is a European model and as far as management knows it has never been tried in North America, according to O’Brien.

“We won’t sell season tickets, but memberships, for example,” he added. “We want it to be all inclusive.”

O’Brien drove up through the snow from his home in Newport, Rhode Island, and McKenna flew from Philadelphia to Manchester — an ECHL city — then motored down. The league offices are in Princeton, New Jersey.

Worcester will be the league’s 29th team and was the only city to apply for an expansion franchise this year. The ECHL would like to eventually get to 30 teams to line up with what the AHL and NHL have.

The new team is the second ECHL member in New England joining Manchester, Worcester’s longtime AHL rival. While Worcester is a good geographical addition for the league, the quality of Rucker’s application was the key factor in the league accepting the city, McKenna said.

Rucker will be the first independent owner of a Worcester hockey team since Roy Boe of the IceCats in 2000-01. The St. Louis Blues bought the franchise from Boe after that, and the Sharks were owned by San Jose throughout their nine-year stay.

Rucker plans to be local and hands-on, which should make a difference, according to former Sharks executive Mike Mudd.

“Cliff has already made strong inroads into becoming part of the community here,” Mudd said. “I know he’s looking at some real estate in town for player housing, which shows his commitment to the city. With the Sharks, it was always tough to overcome the idea that we were the big, bad corporate entity out in California, sort of renting space, if you will.”

Rucker’s audience here on Monday was much more demonstrative than the one in Kalamazoo on Friday. He has invested a lot of money in achieving an equally favorable outcome.