Update:Palm Springs arena groundbreaking scheduled for Feb. 18, tribe announces

Ron Francis, the general manager for the Seattle NHL franchise and its Palm Springs AHL affiliate, was in Palm Springs on Monday, and he said the mindset he's in right now is akin to Christmas Eve.

The anticipation is there, but in this case, Christmas Day is still a year and a half away.

"It's kind of like Christmas Eve right? You're thinking you're going to wake up the next morning and it's Christmas and you've got your presents and that's kind of the same thing here," Francis said during an exclusive interview with The Desert Sun on Monday morning. "You want to get going. You want to see your team on the ice. But it's still going to take a lot of time, but we're doing so many things that it's moving pretty quick to this point, and I know the next year and a half will move quick too."

Francis and his team won't have many days of rest between now and September of 2021 when the Seattle NHL franchise and the Palm Springs AHL franchise begin play. There are arenas to build, staffs to put in place and players to find.

Francis, an NHL Hall of Fame player who was named one of the 100 greatest players of all time, does have some general manager experience. He was the GM for the Carolina Hurricanes from 2014 to 2018.

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He said starting from scratch with an expansion team offers different challenges than taking over an established team as he did in Carolina.

"When you look at the big picture, it's a daunting task to be building something from scratch where there's nothing," Francis said. "On the flip side, it's extremely exciting. You don't get to do this every day. You don't get to come in with a clean slate and build something from the ground up, so that part is exciting. Also you don't have to come in and change things. You get to establish the culture and hire the right people, and if it doesn't work ... then it all points back to you."

Francis said with a brand new organization, though, there are a lot of little things that must be launched to hit the ground running, the type of things that are already in place when you join an established team. To prolong the Christmas gift analogy, a new NHL franchise comes with plenty of assembly required.

He talked about needing to hire a scouting staff, an analytics team, a pro staff, an amateur staff, a strength and conditioning staff. He's actively involved in the development of the new rink in Seattle, the three new rinks at the Seattle area practice facility, the new rinks that will be coming here in the desert, even down to the design of the locker rooms.

Francis, who is 56 and married with three children in their 20s, is in Palm Springs for the first time. All he knew about the area before he arrived Friday was what his daughter told him about attending the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and having her engagement photos taken in Joshua Tree.

He's here to learn about the community, talk to some desert hockey fans and spread the word about the sport he loves. It's an important task in a part of the U.S. that isn't synonymous with hockey and has not had a winter pro sports team to root for ever.

"I came in Friday night and I've basically been a walking billboard with the logo on my shirt everywhere I've gone, and I've had a lot of people comment and talk to me about it, and there generally seems to be some excitement, and that's great to see when you're walking around the community," Francis said. "The big thing is once people see the groundbreaking (perhaps as early as this month) and start seeing some tangible things, the excitement level will kick up even another notch."

The excitement level for the Seattle franchise was evident immediately. Francis said they were given six weeks by the NHL to sell 10,000 season tickets. They sold that many in 12 minutes -- 25,000 in the first hour, 32,000 in the first day.

Katie Townsend, the VP of Communications for NHL Seattle, said they have been happy with the number of ticket deposits they've received already for the Palm Springs team -- you can put a deposit down on tickets at ahlpalmsprings.com -- and that it's been interesting to see that they are coming from both snowbirds and full-time residents.

Francis said drumming up interest in the team and the sport in the desert will be similar to what he did as a player when he joined the Carolina Hurricanes in 1998, a year after their inception.

"They had just started in 1997, and we were trying to grow the game in a new market, and I firmly believe in our sport and the people that are involved in it," he said. "So I think when we can get people into our arena to see our sport, we have a real good chance of them coming back."

Speaking of that on-ice product that we will see in September 2021, what kind of players will comprise the Palm Springs AHL team?

Francis was a first-round draft pick who went straight from juniors to the NHL and never made an AHL pit stop, but he described the type of players he hopes will populate the Palm Springs roster.

"You want the perfect player, right? The guy that has great hockey sense, great skating ability, great skill set, high level of competitiveness and good character," he said. "Unfortunately, it's tough to find guys that have all of that, but that's the beauty of building a team right? You may have a guy that's missing a little bit here, but a guy that's got a little bit extra over here, and you kind of piece it all together.

"Our goal is to build a real solid team in Seattle and then to have that depth that we need to have here in Palm Springs if we run into any injuries or things like that we can call guys up."

Francis said aside from the players they'll select in the expansion draft and the player draft in 2021, they Palm Springs team will be trying to attract guys from the Ontario League, the Western League, the Quebec League, free agents from college, free agents from Finland, Sweden, Russia all over. In addition, they will want to sign guys who played in the AHL before that can provide depth.

Ideally, Francis said there will be a mix of young talent with a few veterans to help show them the ropes. And just like fans who root for a minor league baseball team, desert fans will have to get used to falling in love with a player only to see them shipped to Seattle to join the big leagues.

"We try to find the right mix of veteran guys who maybe know where their career is and are happy to take that role and be a leader for the young guys, be a leader in the community," Francis said. "And our young guys, obviously their goal is to make the NHL, no offense to Palm Springs and the AHL, but their dream is to get to the NHL right? But while they're here, you want to provide them with the opportunity to be as successful as they possibly can."

And last but not least, the question on everyone's mind -- in both Seattle and Palm Springs -- what are these teams going to be named?

Francis, who has the second-most assists in NHL history at 1,249, showed his ability to dish it off, by quickly redirecting the dreaded team name question.

"When people ask, I just like to say it's above my pay grade," he laughed.

Townsend, the recipient of the deflection from Francis, said the Seattle team has it narrowed down to five names, and they are in the graphics and copyright stages before finalizing and making a declaration. They plan to announce it in March.

She said recent rumors -- like one last week that the Seattle team would be named the Seattle Kraken (a mythical squid creature) -- are not to be taken as fact. As for the Palm Springs team name, she said that won't be determined until after the Seattle team is named, but that it likely will be released either in the spring or fall of this year.

For eager desert hockey fans, that will be a present that won't be able to be unwrapped for a while.

Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com. Have a question about the desert's AHL team? Tell Shad and if he doesn't already know it, he'll try to find the answer.