Snowstorm postpones 2 NHL games, strands 2 college teams
NEW YORK (AP) A blizzard socking the Eastern United States disrupted the sports schedule Saturday for a second day, forcing the postponement of two more NHL games and several college basketball games and stranding two college teams on the snowy Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The NHL postponed the Philadelphia Flyers' game at the New York Islanders, which had been scheduled for Saturday night. It also postponed Sunday's game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals. Makeup dates were not set for either game.
The NHL initially shifted the starting time of Friday's game in Washington between the Capitals and Anaheim, moving it up two hours to 5 p.m. The league then postponed it but did not yet have a makeup date.
On Friday, the NBA said Boston's game at Philadelphia, which had been scheduled for Saturday night, would be played on Sunday night instead. The Utah Jazz's game at Washington, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday, will be reset at a later date.
In college basketball, Army played Navy in women's basketball at Madison Square Garden on Saturday afternoon, but the men's game between the schools and a men's game between St. John's and Marquette scheduled for later in the day were postponed because of the storm, which was to expected to dump 15 to 20 inches of snow in the area.
The Duquesne men's basketball team was stuck overnight on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as traffic stretched for miles. The governor's office said the problems in Somerset County began after westbound tractor-trailers were unable to climb a hill and other vehicles backed up behind them.
Coach Jim Ferry said the team bus got stuck at about 9:15 p.m. Friday and hadn't moved since. ''We haven't moved one inch in 12 hours,'' he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Ferry said his players remained in good spirts, passing the time with jokes and watching movies. ''But you got to remember we have some big guys, so it's hard to sleep on a bus like this,'' he said.
The coach said his players were running out of the leftover pizza they bought on the way home from an 86-75 win over George Mason on Friday.
''We're getting pretty hungry,'' he said. ''We hope it starts moving pretty soon.''
The Temple women's gymnastics team also was stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike about 80 miles from Pittsburgh.
Coach Umme Salim-Beasley said her team usually travels with a large amount of snacks, ''so those came in handy,'' and emergency crews brought them water.
''We always bring movies for our bus trip, and we have gone through all of them and we'll probably start watching them again,'' she said.
Salim-Beasley noted that her team's training has made spending hours on a cramped bus more bearable than it might be for others.
''We are a gymnastics team,'' she said. ''So we can get into positions that most people won't be able to get into.''
