Blizzard postpones Washington Capitals’ game vs. Penguins on Sunday

There will be no sequel to “Snovechkin” this weekend. 

The NHL announced the game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals at Verizon Center scheduled for Sunday, Jan. 24, has been postponed due to the severe snowstorm impacting the Washington, D.C., area.

Previously, the Capitals’ game against the Anaheim Ducks on Friday night was postponed by the NHL – at first, the start time was moved up to 5 p.m., and then the game was postponed outright at the urging of D.C. leaders.

Well, it’s a good thing Ovechkin gassed up for the weekend …

The teams were bullish on playing the game before the weekend. Said Pittsburgh’s Eric Fehr, who previously played for the Capitals: “With the Metro being shut down there for all of Sunday I find it really hard to believe people would be able to get to the game, including people who work in the rink.”

Had the Penguins and Capitals played on Sunday, it would have been the second time the rivals faced off during a weekend blizzard. In 2010, they played at Verizon Center in a memorable Super Bowl Sunday afternoon game.

The D.C. area was hit with a massive winter storm. The Penguins were in Montreal for a road game, and couldn’t fly into Washington. So they flew to Newark, NJ, instead, and took a bus down to the game – arriving at 2:15 a.m., which was 10 hours from the noon puck drop.

A much-less-than-capacity crowd arrived via mass transit and surprisingly light-trafficked roads, to watch Alex Ovechkin tally a hat trick against Sidney Crosby’s Penguins, leading a 5-4 rally by the Capitals in an outstanding regular-season game.

Japer’s Rink has a great look back at this one.

This year’s postponement is a bummer for the NHL and NBC, which was going to have the broadcast in the U.S. With much of the East Coast snowed in, preparing to watch NFL championship games later in the day, the numbers would have been strong for this one. But safety comes first, and it couldn’t be guaranteed during one of the worst storms in the history of the region.

Neither the Penguins nor Ducks games have been rescheduled; the latter being a bit trickier to manage.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.