FanHouse Kimmo Timonen

FanHouse's Adam Gretz takes a look at his top 50 players in the NHL. No. 40 is Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Kimmo Timonen.

When I first started this series on Sunday, one of the things I mentioned is that these types of rankings are always filled with subjectivity and personal opinion. That's just unavoidable when attempting to tackle a project like this. Your own feelings will get involved, and there's not an absolute, 100 percent accurate way to rank players and get an end-all and be-all order. It's certainly open to debate. And as I pointed out in the Scott Niedermayer comments on Wednesday, I had a difficult time arguing with myself over some of the rankings and players involved.

Kimmo Timonen would be one of those players.

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Around 10 AM ET Friday morning, the Florida Panthers announced on their twitter feed that some breaking news was set to be announced within the hour. The first thought, of course, was centered around the possibility of the team trading defenseman Jay Bouwmeester's rights to a club that intended to sign him. Or, perhaps, that a general manager had been named.

Two hours later, TSN's Darren Dreger announced, via his own twitter feed (naturally), that Florida and Phoenix had made a trade. The deal? Steven Reinprecht to Florida in return for Stefan Meyer. Considering the initial build up, it was kind of a letdown.

So much for the preliminaries. The 2008-09 NHL regular season is now history -- and, as I've written before, not a moment too soon. Beginning Wednesday night at 7:00 PM ET in Washington and Pittsburgh, the only hockey that really matters will finally take center stage: the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

To get an idea of what life is really like for a hockey fan this time of year, think of it this way: imagine the Sweet 16 of March Madness were all best-of-seven. It's the very simple reason why folks like us are completely giddy from now until sometime in June.

If your significant other is a fan of the NHL, Monday and Tuesday might very well represent the only real chance you'll have to say hello -- or, given the state of the relationship, goodbye -- for the balance of the next two months. It's a chance you shouldn't miss.

With that, I'd like to share a few thoughts on each of the eight playoff series that make up the first round. Safe to say, at first glance, it looks like the most compelling tournament in many years.

On Saturday night, TSN hockey analyst Gord Miller became the latest person to jump on the Pittsburgh is doomed because it has too much cap money tied up in too few players(!) bandwagon.

According to Miller, the Penguins can't compete with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin making as much money as they do, because it forces the Penguins to surround them with bargain basement players. This is apparently because Ray Shero couldn't get his star players to sign cap friendly contracts like Ken Holland did in Detroit. Because of this, the Penguins must (his opinion, not mine) trade Malkin.

A quick recap of yesterday's action from around the National Hockey League.

Today's post will be primarily dedicated to that epic Stanley Cup Finals rematch in Motown because, well, that's the type of game the NHL should be dreaming about. The Penguins overcame third period deficits of 5-2 and 6-4 as they won their fourth in a row, 7-6. It won't make up for a Stanley Cup Finals defeat, obviously, but man, it still feels good.

For the first 45 minutes or so, the Red Wings were doing to the Penguins what they did during last season's Finals ... frustrating them and, at times, dominating play with a relentless puck-possession game, refusing to give the Penguins an inch of space. When Henrik Zetterberg floated that shot behind Marc-Andre Fleury to make it 5-2 with just over ten minutes to play, it seemed as if there was no chance for the Penguins to mount any sort of come back.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, something clicked for the Penguins as they out-shot the Red Wings 13-5 over the final ten minutes of regulation, and 4-0 in overtime.

Following the Penguins' Game 4 loss in Philadelphia, there were lots of questions going into Game 5. Could the Flyers keep the momentum going? How huge would the return of Kimmo Timonen be for the Flyers? How would the Pens respond to the loss?

As it turned out, it took about two and a half minutes to answer that question. Ryan Malone deflected in a Sidney Crosby pass to put the Pens up 1-0. Then Evgeni Malkin snuck a wraparound behind Martin Biron and things looked really good for the Pens. Then Marian Hossa, Malone (again), Jordan Staal, and Pascal Dupuis kept the avalanche of goals going and by the time it was all said and done, the Pens rolled up a 6-0 win over their rival Flyers to bring the Prince of Wales Trophy to Pittsburgh for the first time since 1992.

With the smoke clearing from this game, it's way too early to worry about the Finals (go celebrate, Pens' fans!), but it's hard to think that the young Pens are going to be overmatched against anyone in light of their awesome performance today to eliminate the Flyers. In the words of Mike Lange: HOP IN THE CORDOBA, BABY! THE PENGUINS ARE GOING DANCING WITH LORD STANLEY!

Hard as it is to believe, the odds got a little bit better for the Philadelphia Flyers in the last 24 hours as the news broke that defenseman Kimmo Timonen, who had been thought to be lost for the remainder of the playoffs, will return to the lineup in time for Game Five.

It's less certain that Braydon Coburn, who still has one eye swollen shut, will get back on the ice, though the Flyers seem to have left the door open for a game time decision.

I'll be firing things up at 2:30 p.m. U.S. EDT, though I'm not quite sure who my fellow panelists might be. James Mirtle might show up at the end of the day, while Pat Lackey, our resident Penguins fan, promises to stop by too.

In any case, you never know just who might show up in the peanut gallery, as yesterday's live blog of the Wings-Stars game helped turn up P.J. from Sharkspage as well as somebody from The Pens Blog. So stop by to chat and get ready to answer some twisted poll questions. I promise a good time will be had by all.

With the Philadelphia Flyers trying to do the near-impossible and come back from a 3-0 series deficit, they got some good news as defenseman Kimmo Timonen was OKed to return to the lineup for Game Five.

The problem? Timonen suffered a blood clot in his leg, and his return is not without some serious risk involved: Amputation.

Yes, Timonen won't just have to deal with numbness, pain, and swelling, but the risk that he could lose his ability to walk and skate properly.

The fear with Timonen is that the clot could break free if he were to take a shot off his foot. If that happened, he might need to have his toes amputated. But the clot has not moved and has not gotten bigger. Timonen talked the matter over with his family, assured by doctors that playing poses no further risk to his health.

"My leg could be better, but it could be worse, too," said Timonen. "But in this situation, you know, it can't get any better. So that's pretty much it."

As Dave Babych and Eric Lindros would tell you, the Flyers have a history of putting their players at serious risk, so this kind of thing is par for the course.

As for Timonen, why is he risking so much? If this was Game Seven, I could kind of understand, but this is Game Five, and the Flyers are serious long-shots to make this comeback complete. This isn't the Finals, either.

Sheesh.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Two nights ago, the Dallas Stars turned the tables on their opponents, and last night the Philadelphia Flyers did the same. Maybe it was the magic of throwing jerseys all over every statue in Pittsburgh (I doubt it) or maybe it was an emphasis on crashing the net and their physical style of play (I think so). Either way, we're headed back to Pittsburgh for a Game Five on Sunday.

Probably just as happy as the Stars and Flyers right now are the folks over at NBC. Had both of these series been sweeps, they would have had no games to televise this weekend. Instead, the Wings and Stars play Saturday and the Pens and Flyers square off on Sunday. Now should Sunday's game go into a lengthy overtime, we might have a situation like we did last year during the Preakness Stakes (horse race). If you remember, NBC cut away from Game Five of the Sabres and Sens Eastern Conference Final to air pre-race coverage for a bunch of horses. As you might have guessed, hockey fans didn't like this a whole lot. Sunday, the pre-race coverage is set to air on NBC at 4:30 PM EST, with race time at 6:15. Personally, I'm hoping that the game does go into overtime so that we can see if NBC has learned anything from last year.

But yes, there was a hockey game last night so let's talk about that! The Flyers entered the game, at home, in a 3-0 series hole. They came out of the gates flying, not literally, and took a 3-0 lead after one period thanks to goals from Joffrey Lupul, Daniel Briere and Jeff Carter. The latter two were on the powerplay, as the Flyers went 2-for-4 with the man advantage on the night upping their playoff conversion rate to 23.4%. Now let's skip ahead to the third, but before we do, a little insight from Lupul.

''It's pretty simple, win or go home,'' said Lupul. ''We didn't have to do that much thinking before the game.''

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks for that, Mr. Lupul.

Here's some rough news for Philadelphia Flyers fans: Kimmo Timonen, the team's most consistent defender over the course of the season is projected to miss the entire Eastern Conference Finals because of a blood clot in his left ankle. Timonen apparently suffered the injury during Game Four of Philadelphia's series with Montreal, after getting struck by a shot from Canadiens defenseman Andrei Markov.

Missing the Eastern Conference Final isn't even the worst case scenario. Doctors have apparently told Timonen that if the clot dissipates over the next two weeks, there's a small chance he could return to the ice this season, but that there are no guarantees.

If there was one player the Flyers could not afford to lost other than Mike Richards or Martin Biron, it would be Timonen. Besides quarterbacking one of the best power plays in hockey, Timonen has proven to be an underrated defender, punching way above his weight in the first round when along with Brad Richards he was assigned to shadow Washington's Alex Ovechkin. In 12 games this postseason, Timonen had six assists and was +5.