City ice arena now boasts Ranger’s name

Long Beach is New York Rangers country, and if there was ever any doubt, the hockey team’s presence in the city grew last Saturday with the renaming of the ice arena, now the Emile Francis Memorial Ice Arena at the City of Long Beach.

Francis played for two National Hockey League teams, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Rangers. After retiring from hockey in 1960, he joined the Rangers’ front office as an assistant general manager, before serving as general manager and then coaching the team from 1965 to 1975.

Francis died in February, at age 95.

The Long Beach Ice Arena opened in 1973, and the next year, Francis brought the Rangers there to practice. The team worked out there for six years.

“As a young man, I watched this place being built,” Joe Brand, the city’s commissioner of parks and recreation, recalled. “And, like many others, we were excited about two things. The first one was that we no longer had to get in our cars, with our dads smoking cigarettes, and drive to Amityville for skating lessons. And more importantly, the New York Rangers were coming to our hometown.”

Brand said the idea of changing the name of the arena came from Pete Stemkowski, who played for the Rangers under Francis and now lives in Long Beach. Brand told Stemkowski that he would give it a try, but he added that brokering a deal between a municipality and Madison Square Garden, which had to sign off on the proposal, wouldn’t be easy. But Stemkowski got it done, with some help from the team’s management.

“I want to say thank you to Glen Sather and James Dolan of the New York Rangers,” Stemkowski said. “When I called and spoke to them, the first words out of their mouths were, ‘Absolutely.’ They told me that no matter what it was going to take, it was going to happen.”

Stemkowski recalled that Francis liked Long Beach so much that he wanted his players to live in the area. For a time, as many as 18 of the 20 players on the team lived in Long Beach, Atlantic Beach and East Atlantic Beach, Stemkowski said.

“We didn’t mind the couple of watering holes here,” he said. “I know we stopped at Shine’s once in a while for a cold one after a tough practice.”

Brian Mullen, another former Ranger who’s now an ambassador to youth hockey for the organization, started playing in the junior leagues that Francis established and coached in, like the Metropolitan Junior Hockey League.

“It wasn’t all about putting people in the NHL for him,” Mullen said of Francis. “It was about giving kids like me and my brother the opportunity to play ice hockey when we were playing in the streets. We try to continue that tradition today by having kids in programs, or trying hockey for free out of this building,” he added, referring to the Long Beach arena. “We’re trying to fill the big footsteps of Mr. Francis and continue his legacy.”

Along with the unveiling of the new sign, the Rangers also provided new netting and locker room upgrades for the arena. The former Rangers in attendance — André Doré, Nick Fotiu, Ron Greshner, Steve Vickers and Gilles Villemure, along with Stemkowski and Mullen — even offered a free instructional skate session for young players.

“To see this happen is something special,” said Bobby Francis, Emile’s son. “I saw down the street, someone had a hockey player carved out of wood, on the address sign, with a Ranger insignia. That’s pretty special. Thank you, Rangers, and thank you, Long Beach.”