The opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is scheduled to take place on February 12th. The men’s ice hockey tournament is slated to begin four short days later (February 16th) and players from the New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, and the New York Rangers will certainly have a hand in the final outcome.

No less than 10 players from the aforementioned teams will represent their respective countries in the 21st (XXI) Winter Olympiad, with 5 players from the Devils, 4 from the Rangers, and 1 from the Islanders being selected to Olympic squads.

With 17 goals and 25 assists this season, left winger Zach Parise leads the Devils in scoring and will be among those counted on to provide a scoring punch for Team USA along with his teammate and the Devils’ second leading scorer, right winger Jamie Langenbrunner. Parise also happens to be 1st in the Eastern Conference and 2nd in the National Hockey League (NHL) in plus/minus, which is a statistic that measures a team’s goal differential when a specific player is on the ice.

Devils defenseman Paul Martin, who has played in only 9 games this season, could be joining Langenbrunner and Parise on Team USA if he is fully recovered from a broken left forearm, which required minor surgery to repair late last month after a setback in the healing process.

Langenbrunner, Parise, and potentially Martin will have to face the challenge of keeping their teammate and the Devils’ fifth leading scorer, Patrik Elias, off the scoreboard as he’ll be leading the charge of the Czech Republic team toward Olympic gold.

Meanwhile, Langenbrunner and Parise primarily, are going to have to figure out how to get pucks past another teammate, Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur, who is 1st in the NHL in wins (26), 2nd in shutouts (4), and 6th in the league with a goals against average of 2.20. Brodeur will be one of the netminders for Team Canada.

Rangers center Chris Drury and right winger Ryan Callahan, who will be playing alongside Langenbrunner, Martin, and Parise on Team USA, will have a similar quandary to contend with as they know all too well how adept their teammate, right winger Marian Gaborik, is at lighting the lamp and how proficient Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist is at preventing the lamp from being lit.

Gaborik, who will be playing for Team Slovakia, is the leading goal scorer in the NHL this season, 3rd in points, and one of the top candidates for the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

Lundqvist, one of the goalies for defending champion Team Sweden, has deserved a much better fate in several of the Rangers’ disappointing results as he and Gaborik have done just about everything they can possibly do to keep the team in the playoff hunt.

The Islanders’ sole on-ice representative in the Winter Olympics will be 32-year-old defenseman Mark Streit, the elder statesman of the defense for Team Switzerland.

In addition to the player representatives, Islanders head coach Scott Gordon and Rangers head coach John Tortorella will be joining Team USA head coach Ron Wilson’s staff as assistant coaches.

By the way, it’s no coincidence that the Devils have as many players selected to Olympic teams (5) as the Rangers (4) and the Islanders (1) combined. The Devils are 1st in the Eastern Conference playoff picture, the Rangers are 8th, and the Islanders are 11th.

Is the gap that great between New Jersey and their cross-river rivals? The numbers don’t lie.