I've been doing a bunch of relocation testing. You have to do it right away.
Here's another option. If you go into creation zone and create a team you get all the same options as relocating. You can pick market size, fan base, your starting levels for facilities, everything that relocation has. The beauty of it is when you start a franchise you can substitute in your team for any NHL team and then you don't have to simulate the first season if you just want to start a franchise as your new team. The other thing I like is you can edit all the items and go test them in a play now game and make sure everything is how you want it before you start a franchise. When you do all that using the relocation feature in franchise mode, once you've finalized there's no going back. It would really suck to get thru a year of franchise and then realize the hot pink unis you made look terrible.
I would at the very least make a team in creation zone and test all your choices in play now before you commit to them in franchise. I restarted 3 franchises because the uniforms that I made I thought looked good when I was making them but once I got in game they were bad.