While the Flyers' series with the Capitals and Canadiens were supposed to reach extreme physical levels, they never really got to that point. It will be a huge surprise if the Flyers-Penguins Eastern Conference final series, which begins Friday in Pittsburgh, doesn't get excessively physical.

"I got here late last year and there was a great rivalry then," Flyers goalie Marty Biron said. "There was a rivalry throughout the season. You look at Washington, you look at Montreal, it took a game and a half to get the emotions really involved in the games and I think with Pittsburgh it's going to take maybe half a minute and things are going to get going.

"[Pittsburgh] might not want to say that, and if they feel the same way, I don't know, but that's the way I feel things are going to go. And that's great. That's going to be some fun hockey again and that's what playoff hockey is."

It's probably safe to say the Penguins feel the same way.

In their eight meetings this season, the teams combined for 431 penalty minutes.

The Flyers won five of the eight and each team had a blowout win at home. For the Flyers, that was a lot better than the 0-8 record they had against Pittsburgh last season.

"When you play a team that many times during a year, you build a rivalry," coach John Stevens said. "It seems like we've gone at it pretty good for 2 years now. They had their run a year ago and this year we've climbed back to competitiveness that we needed to.

"They play a hard game, their stars are competitive people, they work hard, they compete hard, they get involved physically and we have a team that plays hard as well.

"I certainly see the emotional level being real high from the get-go."

One of the questions for Stevens, considering the possible level of physical play, will be whom he uses in the lineup. The Penguins' Brooks Orpik and Jarkko Ruutu play throughout every game. Georges Laraque, the Penguins' tough guy, has been playing in the postseason and had 6 minutes of ice time in Game 5 against the Rangers. In addition, winger Gary Roberts is a possibility.

All four of those players play hard - it was a knee-on-knee hit by Ruutu on Daniel Briere in the last game in the Mellon Arena that put the Flyers forward in a knee brace and knocked him out of the last two regular-season games.

So will Stevens consider using his own tough guys, Riley Cote and Steve Downie?

"I'm not sure yet," Stevens said. "I'm going to take the next 2 days and watch some of [the Rangers'] series. I watched some of it, but I want to watch it again and just get a feel for it.

"But we're not just going to make our lineup based on what they're doing. We're going to make our lineup based on what we can do and what we need to do as well. Certainly [Cote] is a consideration, [Downie] is a consideration.

"We have depth on the back end too; [Jarsolav Modry] and [Ryan] Parent haven't been playing, so we feel like we've got depth at every position and [we'll] take the week to sort it out. All these guys may play at some point."

Time off

Instead of practicing yesterday, John Stevens gave his squad a day to recover in the hopes of bringing in a more rested and ready team, one with less bumps and bruises.

"It's a long week and we actually looked at the possibility of taking 2 days off," Stevens said. "[I'm] not a big fan of 2 consecutive days off right now. We are a little banged up. We didn't get any time to rest between [the first two] series and we figure we would give them Sunday off because of the travel [after clinching their last series at Montreal] and everything.

"Monday was a real good work day. We had a good practice with a conditioning skate at the end, so now when you take a day off between practices, it's really 48 hours of recovery time and we have 2 days to practice before we begin.

"It gives us an opportunity to get the work that we need and a real good opportunity to get the rest that we need." *