Amid a storm that has already seen five-and-half feet of snow dumped on western New York and up to three feet more expected by Thursday night, the NHL announced that Friday's contest between the New York Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres at the First Niagara Center has been postponed. A make-up date will be announced later.

"Hockey seems like a very small thing when a city is going through what we're going through right now," Sabres coach Ted Nolan said in a scrum on Thursday.

A sparse crowd attended Tuesday night's win over the San Jose Sharks with the massive storm ongoing.

The Buffalo Bills are scheduled to host the New York Jets on Sunday. An estimated 220,000 tonnes of snow needs to be removed from Ralph Wilson Stadium for that to be feasible.

On Thursday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated that the game going on as scheduled would be "impractical."

"Everybody would love to see a Bills game go forward, but I think even more, everybody wants to make sure public safety comes first," Cuomo said in a news conference. "At this point in time, doing what we have to do with the driving ban and everything we just said -- staying off the roads -- would make a Bills game impractical."