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Snowstorm wreaks havoc on sports schedule and team travel

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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 college basketball games and NASCAR’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

The NBA said Boston’s game at Philadelphia scheduled for tonight will be made up 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 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 this 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, N.C., honoring Terry Labonte, Jerry Cook, Bobby Isaac, Bruton Smith and Curtis Turner until this 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 today 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 today to Sunday.

The Atlantic Coast Conference said Thursday the Syracuse-Virginia game scheduled for noon 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 today’s game between the No. 5 Terrapins and No. 21 Michigan State. A women’s game in Rhode Island between visiting Yale and Brown was switched from today to Friday, and the St. John’s Fencing Invitational in Cambridge, Mass., today 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.

Monmouth University couldn’t even catch a break. Its first home swimming meet in more than 30 yearswas postponed to Tuesday.

This was no time for horse racing, either.

New York City’s Aqueduct Racetrack canceled today’s card but still remained open for simulcasting, and the winter hat and glove giveaway was moved back a week.

Maryland’s Laurel Park canceled its Friday card after five races. Planned weekend racing was also called off. Neither Laurel nor nearby Pimlico would offer simulcasting today.

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 was 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 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 its 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.

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