RYE, N.Y. -- Before the New York Rangers decided to hold their training camp at Madison Square Garden, a much more dangerous Manhattan location was considered.

The downtown Chelsea Piers ice rink was a possibility, and the players would have been housed in a hotel severely damaged Tuesday along with the collapsed World Trade Center towers.

Hotel rooms were reserved in May, but a lack of locker room space made the home arena, which sits a few dozen blocks away from the destroyed twin towers, a better selection.

"We all live in the city. We could've just as easily been skating at Chelsea Piers, staying at the Marriott right down at the World Trade Center," captain Mark Messier said. "That's life. You try to figure out why sometimes and try to help out the ones who weren't so fortunate."

With Manhattan no longer an option this week, the Rangers moved to their regular training facility at Rye and opened camp a day late on Thursday.

"Everybody looked like they were relieved to be on the ice instead of the alternatives of yesterday, which were not very good," New York coach Ron Low said.

Quiet arenas will be common across North America this weekend as the NHL joined the rest of the mourning sports world Thursday by canceling the remainder of its weekend preseason schedule.

On Wednesday, the league called off the first 12 exhibitions -- which were scheduled for Saturday.

The preseason, delayed by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington earlier this week, will begin Monday.

"I think it's the proper thing to do," Rangers general manager Glen Sather said. "A few days that affect what we're doing is really inconsequential as far as I'm concerned. Hockey is separate.

"What's happened to everybody's life is so dramatic, so canceling an exhibition game here or there --" he said, without finishing his thought.

Most seemed to agree.

"You don't want to be paranoid, but in a situation where people are hijacking planes and crashing them into cities, it's tough to overestimate the extent they'll go to cause havoc," goalie Mike Richter said. "You don't want to put people in harm's way by having 80,000 people at a baseball game or 20,000 at a hockey game.

"I think it was good of the NHL to have no games, and the NFL and major league baseball are doing the same thing out of both respect, and the practical reason that you don't want to add to the congestion and confusion."

Of the weekend games that were canceled, many were scheduled in NHL cities, but others were on neutral ice.

The Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche were supposed to take on Swedish teams in Stockholm. While the first game on Saturday was canceled, the Avalanche will play on Sunday, as scheduled.

A two-game set in Anchorage, Alaska, between St. Louis and San Jose was canceled.

"We are very disappointed for all hockey fans in Alaska that we will not have the opportunity to showcase the NHL and the San Jose Sharks in Anchorage," Sharks president Greg Jamison said. "However, in light of the tragic events that have taken place in America over the past few days, this is the right thing to do."

The Rangers, who will practice at Rye the rest of the week, are dealing with personal connections to the attacks. The brother-in-law of assistant general manager Don Maloney has not been heard from. Some players also have friends who are missing but were reluctant to talk about them.

The Rangers shifted the dates of two exhibition games and will now play at Detroit on Monday and at Montreal on Sept. 26.

The Los Angeles Kings were hit hard. Garnet "Ace" Bailey, the team's director of pro scouting, and Mark Bavis, an amateur scout, were among the 65 people on United Airlines Flight 175 -- the second plane to hit the World Trade Center.

Sather was a teammate of Bailey's and worked with him while both were with the Edmonton Oilers.

"Everything was a shock to me," Sather said. "Knowing Ace the way I know him, he'd be the one guy if there was anything he could do, he'd be doing it on that flight. It's sad."