Coburn didn't know when he was talking on Wednesday that Timonen had a blood clot in his left ankle and was likely done for the playoffs. Timonen didn't know, nobody knew. It was the news that rocked the Stanley Cup playoffs when it came down last night, on the eve of Game 1 between the Flyers and Penguins in the Eastern Conference finals.

Anyway, Coburn was talking.

"Kimmo's great as a partner," he said. "He's such a smart partner back there. He's got a great knack for always putting himself in a position to get the puck. So, when I look for an option, [and something's] not open, 'Where's Kimmo?' He's got a great knack . . . His head is always on a swivel. He's got great lateral movement. He's got great hands. He's fun to play with.

"He's got great patience. He holds on to the puck a lot. He seems to be a better passer than he used to be . . . And he's got great strength, too."

He was the Flyers' No. 1 defenseman.

Now Coburn is.

Fifteen months ago, almost none of us had heard of Coburn when Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren acquired him from Atlanta in exchange for a bag of consonants (Alexei Zhitnik). Now, Coburn will likely play more minutes than any other Flyers defenseman the rest of the way, however long that is.

The Flyers will paint as happy a face as they can on this, but it will take a few gallons. No NHL team loses its top defenseman at this time of the year and doesn't feel it. No NHL team faced with the prospect of playing a seven-game series against Evgeni Malkin on one line and Sidney Crosby and Marian Hossa on the other line could possibly not feel the loss of a Timonen. We are not talking about if there will be pain, we are talking about how much.

Timonen was playing about 25 minutes a game in the playoffs, Coburn about 24. Coburn has played big minutes but he has not yet played crazy minutes in the postseason. At this point, it is hard to imagine a way where he won't play crazy minutes from here on. There would seem to be no alternative.

But this is what he has going for him: This is a pretty confident kid, pretty quiet but pretty confident. Asking him the other day if he could have envisioned, 15 months after the trade, that he would be playing big minutes in the first defense pairing in the conference finals, he said, "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

Just like that.

"It's hard to believe the whole situation in a way, being in the NHL," said Coburn, who grew up in a small farming community in Saskatchewan (Shaunavon, population 1,700).

"When you're a kid, it's such a high mountain to climb. And these guys are just so, so, I don't know how to describe them. But you get a step closer, and then you get a step closer.

"In Atlanta, I was getting a little bit of time with the big club and I felt like my game was getting better. Fortunately for me, this trade helped out a lot. It gave me a lot of confidence.

"It was, 'Hey, this is the way I played the whole way growing up.' I played lots, having fun, played against the other teams' top lines, made a contribution. I think I always knew I could do it. It was just a matter of getting a chance."

Now, without Timonen, the opportunity just got bigger. It is hard to know how Flyers coach John Stevens might shuffle his pairings, about who might end up next to Coburn. He played with Derian Hatcher before Hatcher broke his leg in March but, well, who knows? The coaches probably debated that into the night, and maybe the morning. And who they might try to get out against Malkin and who else they might try to get out against Crosby and Hossa - who knows?

For whatever it's worth, Coburn has had success against Malkin as a kid, playing against him in both the world under-18 tournament and the world junior tournament. In the world juniors in 2005, Coburn was out against Malkin for pretty much every shift of the gold-medal game and Malkin didn't score.

But that was then and this is different. As good as Coburn has been this spring - he is big and fast and has that great reach and seems pretty calm - it was with Timonen next to him. Tonight will be very different.

Tonight.

"You know, I don't get very nervous before games," Coburn said, before the news that changed everything. "Most of the time, I'm just so excited that it drowns out the nervousness. I get pretty pumped up."

We'll see, and quickly. *

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