Olympic Photo Blogs and Musings

If you can’t get enough of the Vancouver Winter Olympic — or are wondering what the hullabaloo is all about — check out this handy list of Olympic photographers and their blogs / photos.

View list of Olympic Photographers at: Philly.com

So far, the US rules the podium with 28 medals, followed closely by Germany with 24, Norway 18 and Canada 15. [See Official results]. Of course, for Canada, the most coveted Gold medal is that of Ice Hockey. Not to diminish the ability of the other semi-finalists (Finland and Slovakia) but it looks like we may be headed to another USA-Canada showdown at the finale on Sunday 28 12:15 PST (also the Closing Ceremony of the Winter Olympics at 17:30 PST).

You know what is going to happen if the US wins, don’t you:

• The US Ice Hockey team, made up of young players, most of them yet to become a household name in the hockey world, would have beaten a Canadian team filled with well-known and famous million-dollar-contract superstars. [Do you realize that everytime there is a hockey game, there is perhaps the concentration of most multi-millionaires at one place? Almost every player having fun on the ice is a millionaire, about to become one or a multi-millionaire.]
• The GM and Coach of the US Olympics Team are also the GM and Coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, currently sitting at last place in the NHL Eastern Conference (next to last in the Division). A US win should send the message loud and clear to the players of that team that you don’t need superstars to win hockey games. You need to buy into the Coach’s game plan.
• The US will ruin the Winter Olympic for Canada.
• We will not speak to you anymore.

But first, the US will have to beat Finland (Friday 26 12:00 noon PST) and Canada has a date with Slovakia (Friday 26 18:30 PST) which beat Sweden, the defending gold medalist.

Aw, don’t forget that many of the hockey players competing for their respective countries in fact play together on the same NHL teams. And once the Olympics is over, it is back to the grind again for the Stanley Cups Playoffs and finale. Lots of tired players, some having won a medal (scoring against their own NHL goalie) and I wonder if this is going to affect their performance in the NHL. We’ll see — and this may affect whether NHL players will be allowed to play in future Winter Olympic.