Prospects Dim for Hockey in Anaheim This Season : Sports: Deadline passed Sunday for teams to notify the national league. The city has a $2.5-million annual obligation on new arena.

The prospects of a hockey team starting its season in the new Anaheim Arena became grim this week when the deadline passed for teams to notify the National Hockey League of any intentions to move--and none did.

“This is disastrous,” said Councilman Irv Pickler, who had voted against building the $103-million arena because of the city’s potential financial obligations in the project. “I was afraid something like this might happen.”

Said Mayor-elect Tom Daly: “It’s certainly not good news.”

Under the city’s agreement with Ogden Corp. and the Nederlander Organization, its partners in the arena project, the city is liable for annual payments of up to $2.5 million for eight years if the facility is not being used by a professional basketball or hockey team after it opens next summer. That liability is reduced to $1.5 million per year with one professional sports tenant.

City officials already have acknowledged that it could be up to three years before they lure a professional basketball franchise.

“If we can’t get a hockey team in here next year, it’s really going to hurt the city,” Pickler said. “I don’t know where the money would come from.”

Daly and Pickler said they hoped that NHL officials would consider making an exception to the deadline if the city succeeded in getting a hockey team to move to the arena.

“I don’t view the passing of this deadline as the final word,” Daly said. “I think the league might consider an exception if we got a team here. . . . It’s my understanding that Ogden is working diligently to bring a team to Anaheim.”

The NHL deadline for franchises to notify the league office of intent to change markets passed on Sunday.

NHL President Gil Stein said that while the deadline might be circumvented, he did not “anticipate that there will be attempts to get around it.”

Stein said that he has heard rumors about teams talking about moving to Anaheim but believed they were only rumors.

“I don’t have any reason to believe anyone’s planning to try to move there,” Stein said.

On Monday, Brad Mayne, general manager of the Anaheim Arena for Ogden, said the passing of the deadline did not automatically kill all hopes of having a team in the arena by the 1993-94 season.

“League rules are not so specific,” he said. “You just have to jump through a lot of hoops.”

Mayne said that Ogden was still negotiating with hockey teams to relocate in Anaheim.

“We’re in a precarious situation,” he said. “We’re not going to discuss specifics openly. There are still a number of teams we’re talking to.”

When asked what teams, he said: “They’re sworn to secrecy, and so are we.”

But Mayne also seemed to back away from early expectations of getting a hockey team in the arena by the first year. He said he was now “confident of getting a team in our first or second year.”

Several teams have been rumored to be interested in Anaheim at one time or another.

The owner of the Minnesota North Stars, Norm Green, talked about moving here, but apparently ended up using Anaheim as leverage to get a better deal in his current arena, the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn.

The Hartford Whalers were also rumored to be interested in coming to Anaheim, but the state of Connecticut has stepped in to keep the team there with a series of financial incentives.

About a year ago, representatives of the Winnipeg Jets talked to Anaheim representatives, but officials with the city of Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba came up with a deal to keep the team there.