"John told us Kimmo was going to take over for him," said center R.J. Umberger. "He stepped into the room and read our starting lineup. The way he did it, with the emotion he showed, it gave me goose bumps."

It did more than that. Timonen's short-but-to-the-point talk about having fun and believing in themselves inspired the Flyers to a three-goal first period and an eventual 4-2 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Wachovia Center last night.

The win extends the Flyers' season and the Eastern Conference finals to a Game 5 in Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon. But the biggest development of the night: The victory has given Timonen a chance to carry that emotion onto the ice.

Timonen will skate by himself today and will be taken off the blood thinners he has been using to combat the blood clot in his left ankle. The injury originally was believed to be season-ending, but he is now a possibility to play Sunday.

"We'll see," Timonen said. "I skate [today]. We're going to go through all the stuff [today] and then we'll see the doctor.

"The doctor feels that there is no chance the clot is going to get loose or break up or anything like that. It's a great sign. A week ago, they were afraid it was going to get bigger and cut loose. I've been on blood thinners now for 8 days, and we'll see how it goes.

"If I feel tomorrow that I'm good to go for Sunday, then I'm good for Sunday. There is nothing to prevent me from playing," he said. "I may have numbness in my toes, but if I can deal with that, then I can play. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. I just want to make sure I can help the team and not hurt them.

"I'm pretty pumped."

And the Flyers will be, too. The news was being kept low last night; the players said they were not even aware of what was going on.

But Stevens let on during his postgame news conference that Timonen was a possibility and that fellow injured defenseman Braydon Coburn could join him.

"Well, we won't know until each day, we'll see what it brings," Stevens said. "But is there a chance? I think there is, either or both. The first thing is you have to make sure of the health of the player here, and we're not going to put anybody at risk. If they're not able to go, we'll keep marching ahead like we are. But if we're able to get one or both back, it would be a huge lift for our team."

The return of the Flyers' shutdown pair would be bad news for the Penguins, who took advantage of their absence and ran over the Flyers in the first three games, pushing them to the edge.

The Flyers responded last night by storming onto the ice in the Center and refusing to go quietly into the night. Joffrey Lupul, Daniel Briere and Jeff Carter all scored in the first 20 minutes.

Lupul scored into an empty net to end a tense third period, the result of two Jordan Staal goals that had cut the Penguins' deficit to one.

But the Flyers followed their offensive effort with a battering and bruising of everything Penguin, giving them a dose of the kind of defense they used to stifle the Flyers for the first three games.

"It helped getting off to the lead, there was no question about that," said defenseman Derian Hatcher, who played solid and threw a few punches to plant an exclamation mark on the game.

"There is a saying that when a team is behind in a series, it's like backing a cat into a corner, or something like that. But that's usually when they fight their hardest," he added.

Hatcher and every other player in the room tempered their emotion with caution, but it was clear they could see a way up from the daunting task of winning four in a row and advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.

"We know it's a long haul, but every series has four steps and you've got to get over that first step so you can go to the second one. I think that if you look at it as we have to win three in a row now, it's seems a little less daunting," Hatcher said.

"We're just going in there trying to win one game, and we'll go from there."

Only one thing was going to keep Pittsburgh from playing the trap and sitting on the Flyers - and that was a Flyers lead.

The Flyers grabbed that and more.

Playing the best first period of the playoffs, they not only got pucks deep but shelled Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury with 17 shots while storming his doorstep.

Lupul scored first by taking a shot off the rush. The puck ticked off Penguins defenseman Hal Gill's stick and sailed over Fleury's shoulder.

Briere got the next goal on a power play doing what he does best, getting to the front of the net. Briere came from behind the net, muscled his way past the much larger Gill and converted a rebound to give the Flyers a 2-0 lead.

Carter was next. Umberger got a shot into Fleury's pads and the rebound came to Carter, who waited for the opening and finished the play for the second power-play goal of the period and the 3-0 lead.

Pittsburgh pushed back in the third period with a pair of goals from Staal and the crowd got edgy until Lupul scored his second of the game into the open net.

So now there is another trip across the state, and another chance.

"Going into the game, we were never doubting ourselves," said defenseman Randy Jones, who had an assist while logging the most ice time at 25:49. "We always had a lot of confidence in each other. This team never quits." *