Snow won't halt pond hockey tournament

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - The storm has disrupted travel plans for thousands of people on Friday and into the weekend, when the Labatt Blue Pond Hockey Tournament is scheduled to take to the ice in the Queen City.

Every single flight that was supposed to leave Buffalo Friday night was either canceled or delayed, as were most of the planes on the arrival board. The flights were casualties, not so much of the snow falling in western New York, but of a blizzard brewing off the East Coast. Boston Logan, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports are all shut down.

Native Buffalonian Chris Baumgarden is driving up for the Labatt Blue Pond Hockey Tournament, from his adoptive home in Raleigh, North Carolina. He's not the least bit worried about getting here.

"All my friends are like, 'Dude, it's not that bad. Don't worry about it. Just get up here.' And you'll check the Weather Channel, and it's mass panic, no bread on the shelves at Walmart kind of a thing. It's kind of a weird discrepancy between Buffalonians and everybody else," Baumgarden said.

At Erie Basin Marina, the Labatt folks were contending with our own heavy, wet snow. With the snow falling at rate of up to an inch per hour at times Friday, the crews are going to have their work cut out for them, keeping the ice in playable condition.

Brand manager Lisa Texido said, "The temperature, we like. It's the snow that's been a little more work for us. We've had crews out here all day, clearing pathways, clearing rinks. As you can see, they're out here now; they're going to continue on into the night and then they'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning."

Baumgarden's excited to see his friends play, and he doesn't even mind if the going does get a little tough.

"In North Carolina, if it snows an inch they cancel school. People pull their cars over on the side of the road," Baumgarden said. "So it's kind of fun to get up to Buffalo [and] drive through it, to see if I still have the right skills."