Snowstorm wreaks havoc on sports schedule and team travel


              A sign warms motorists of an incoming snowstorm, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Secaucus, N.J. Towns across the state are hunkering down in preparation for a major snowstorm expected to begin later in the day. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
A sign warms motorists of an incoming snowstorm, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Secaucus, N.J. Towns across the state are hunkering down in preparation for a major snowstorm expected to begin later in the day. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

A blizzard menacing the Eastern United States disrupted the sports schedule Friday while wreaking havoc with team travel plans.

Two NBA games and one in the NHL were postponed as were plenty of basketball games and NASCAR's Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

The NBA said Boston's game at Philadelphia scheduled for Saturday night will be made up on Sunday at 7 p.m. The Utah Jazz's game at Washington, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday, will be reset at a later date.

The NHL initially shifted the starting time of Friday's game between the Washington Capitals and Anaheim, moving it up two hours to 5 p.m. The league then postponed it on Friday but did not yet have a makeup date. A decision regarding Sunday's game between the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins and Capitals will be announced Saturday morning.

Up to 2 feet of snow was predicted from what the National Weather Service was calling a "potentially crippling winter storm." A state of emergency was declared in Pennsylvania for Saturday. The storm was expected to drop 12 to 18 inches of snow and create possible blizzard conditions beginning Friday evening.

NASCAR called off Friday night's ceremony in Charlotte, North Carolina, honoring Terry Labonte, Jerry Cook, Bobby Isaac, Bruton Smith and Curtis Turner until Saturday afternoon.

"OK it's finally snowing," NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted "I was the dummy who didn't get the extra bread. Waiting out my repercussion."

The men's basketball game between No. 16 Providence and No. 4 Villanova slated for Saturday at Wells Fargo Center was postponed until Sunday at 1 p.m. The Saint Joseph's men's basketball game at La Salle also was rescheduled from Saturday to Sunday.

The Atlantic Coast Conference said Thursday the Syracuse-Virginia game scheduled for noon Saturday would be played at 7 p.m. Sunday. The Cavaliers' visit to Wake Forest, originally set for Monday at 9 p.m., was pushed back to Tuesday at 7 p.m.

The storm also forced the Atlantic 10, Atlantic Sun, and Ohio Valley conferences to shuffle their weekend schedules, moving some games up and postponing others.

Maryland canceled all weekend sports events, including the women's basketball game between the No. 5 Terrapins and No. 21 Michigan State on Saturday. A women's game in Rhode Island between visiting Yale and Brown was switched from Saturday to Friday, and the St. John's Fencing Invitational in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday was canceled.

Vanderbilt postponed its athletic Hall of Fame dinner scheduled for Friday night to honor an induction class that includes Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price and Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler.

This was no time for horse racing, either.

Maryland's Laurel Park canceled its Friday card after five races. Planned racing for Saturday and Sunday was also called off. Neither Laurel nor nearby Pimlico would offer simulcasting on Saturday.

Laurel jockey Trevor McCarthy said racing in cold is one thing, but storms are something else.

"When the weather gets real tough, it's a little brutal," he said.

Oaklawn scrapped Friday's nine-race card. The Arkansas track was hit with nearly an inch of rain and an inch of snow.

Long before the storm was even set to hit, bad weather causing problems for teams in Washington. And it made a bad night for the Miami Heat even worse.

The injury-ravaged Heat lost in Washington on Wednesday night, left the Wizards' arena about 10:20 p.m. for the bus ride to Dulles Airport and didn't take off until five hours later. Icy roads and bridges meant their bus caravan was stopped at one point, and it took almost four hours before the team could make it to their plane.

They took off around 3:30 a.m., didn't land in Toronto until nearly 5 a.m. and reached their hotel shortly after 6 a.m. - some five hours or so behind schedule.

The NHL's Philadelphia Flyers announced a special Snowstorm Savings on tickets to the team's next two home games, against the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens. The more snow Philadelphia gets, the deeper the discount.

Not everybody, however, was scrambling for cover.

In La Quinta, California, at the PGA Tour's CareerBuilder Classic, players braced Friday for afternoon temperatures in the mid-70s in sunny, calm conditions.

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Contributing to this report were: AP Sports Writers Beth Harris in Los Angeles; Tim Reynolds in Miami; Jimmy Golen in Boston; Jenna Fryer, Joedy McCreary and Aaron Beard in North Carolina; Brian Mahoney in New York; John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York; Steve Megargee in Nashville, Tennessee; Dave Ginsburg in Baltimore; Dan Gelston in Philadelphia; and John Nicholson in Phoenix.

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