Is it Friday yet?

A day before the Flyers start their Eastern Conference final series against Pittsburgh, and I'm about to lose it. Not even the Stars-Wings series is enough to satisfy me right now, I need some Flyers hockey! This has been one of the longest weeks ever.

Here's a fun bit of info for tomorrow: Apparently Kimmo Timonen, our No.1 shutdown defender for Sidney Crosby, has a blood clot and is out indefinitely. That's right. Geez, Kimmo, you couldn't wait until, oh I don't know, JULY to get a blood clot??? What the hell, son?!?! I shouldn't be too shocked and I feel really bad for him, but come on! I guess this means that John Stevens will call up Jaroslav Modry, who hasn't been the same since his father passed earlier this spring.

Hopefully, the rest of the team made it to Pittsburgh in one piece, so they should be at 90% tomorrow for Game 1. To be honest, I'm not even that nervous, even though the Penguins will be the toughest opponent so far. It's not like they don't know this team since the Flyers seem to play them every other week during the regular season. There's enough bad blood to make this series the best of the postseason, plus you have the individual rivalries like Crosby vs. Hatcher, Crosby vs. Richards, Cote vs. Laraque, and Pens fans vs. reality (seriously, go to http://www.hfboards.com/ - pure comedy gold over there). Everyone and their brother has picked the Pens to win, including Maggie the Monkey on TSN, so nothing new there.

Since I had some free time this week in between waiting for the Flyers game, studying for my upcoming insurance exam, and generally thinking about nothing, I started coming up with ways to make the NHL a little bit better. Besides the prerequisite ideas (get rid of Bettman, end the shootout, contract to 24 teams), I came up with the notion of an Original Six weekend. You know, have a tripleheader where the Original Six teams match up against one another and the NHL can hype up the historical significance of it all. For example, the 1:00 game could be New York vs. Boston, followed by Detroit vs. Chicago, and have Montreal play Toronto to complete the trifecta. Or mix it up and have Montreal go up against Boston or whatever. Seeing as how the NHL and the media love to talk up the Original Six teams and since were getting close to the league 100th anniversary, why not have the teams face off during the regular season? Put 'em in the retro sweaters while we're at it and make a few more bucks on the side, too. If the league can arrange it so that the six Canadian teams play each other on the same Saturday, I don't see why this can't be done. I also thought about realigning the league into a two-conference, four-division setup, but then I got sleepy and lost my train of thought.

Seriously, is it Friday yet?