Red Bulls" Game Against D.C. United Is Postponed HARRISON, N.J. - In the end, Major League Soccer also had to cancel, or at least postpone, what would have been its winter classic. Wednesday night's Eastern Conference playoff match between the Red Bulls and D.C. United was abandoned before it began because of swirling wind and snow in the New York metropolitan area from a northeaster. The match was scheduled to start at about 8:20 p.m. Eastern and be televised on NBC Sports Network. But after several delays, as staff members attempted to shovel snow from the Red Bull Arena field, officials called the game at about 9 p.m. "We made an attempt to play tonight; the forecast we saw at no time said we would have so much snow," Nelson Rodriguez, the league's executive vice president, said after the game was rescheduled for Thursday at 7:30 p.m. In the end, we did not feel we could get the field to a safe condition for the players. Red Bulls Coach Hans Backe had said after training Tuesday that he hoped and expected to have the match postponed. Dan Courtemanche, the vice president of communications for the league, said early Wednesday night that M.L.S. considered starting the match at 2 p.m., moving it to PPL Park in Chester, Pa., or postponing it, although he said the last option was dismissed because of uncertainty about the weather Thursday. The two-game, home-and-home total goals series had already been affected by Hurricane Sandy. D.C. United, the third seed in the Eastern Conference, was scheduled to play at the fourth-seeded Red Bulls on Saturday. But late last week, with the effects of the storm lingering in the Northeast, the sequence of games was switched. The Red Bulls went to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington on Saturday and came away with a 1-1 draw. The winner of the series will now play in the conference finals against the winner of the Sporting Kansas City-Houston series on Sunday afternoon, instead of Saturday afternoon. "It would be unfair for one of these teams to have to play on Saturday," Rodriguez said, without mentioning that the league's collective bargaining agreement precludes fewer than two days of rest between games. "Originally, the forecast for the nor'easter was for wind and rain," he said. Mindful of what the impact could be and the experience in the region from Hurricane Sandy, we decided to make an attempt. We considered an earlier postponement yesterday but felt we had a window to play and play safely. But nature has a funny way of playing tricks on people. There were fewer than 1,000 people in the stands at the scheduled start time, mostly D.C. United supporters who traveled to the game and Red Bulls supporters in their customary spot in the stadium's South Ward. After the cancellation, all they had to do was attempt to get home safely.