Kimmo Timonen gets some good news on blood clots

Dave Isaac | USA TODAY Sports

BUFFALO – Defenseman Kimmo Timonen was so excited Friday night, he told reporters he left his cell phone in his car on purpose.

Timonen, 39, was at the Philadelphia Sports Writers' Association dinner to accept the Good Guy Award and doctors already knew, thanks to a CT scan, that the blood clots in his lungs, discovered this summer when he was working out, are now gone. He was still waiting the results of an ultrasound on his calf, where another clot was discovered over the summer.

He's 1-for-2.

The clot in his leg still exists, after Timonen has been working out off the ice and taking medication in hopes that he can still play at least some of the season he has vowed will be his last.

"If he really wants to play and everything we hear from the docs checks out, we'll allow him to play," general manager Ron Hextall said.

Not so fast. There's still a lot of hoops left to jump through.

Timonen and the Flyers would need to find a "safe way," in the defenseman's words, to play while still on some kind of medication. Even that is up in the air because Hextall, Timonen, director of sports medicine Jim McCrossin and a team of doctors have a conference call Wednesday to get further evaluations.

"It's good news that the lungs are clear. I think it's great news," Hextall said. "The leg...we were hoping for better news, not necessarily for the hockey club, but for Kimmo.

"There's still a chance he can play. I just don't know how great it is or what not. It's gonna come down to Kimmo. Like I said, if there's a risk, we're not gonna expose him to it."

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Timonen has tried his best to avoid being around the team so he doesn't get his hopes up. He is at the team's practice facility in the early mornings, before the active players get there. He sees them occasionally when he walks through the arena before heading up to the press box to watch home games.

"He's the piece that we've been missing," points leader Jake Voracek said.

"He's a defenseman that's played over 1,000 games. He's an experienced guy, played five Olympics. He knows what it takes to find a way to win the games. Obviously that's the leadership, it's everything at this moment. If he's going to play it's going to be great for us and great for him. Hopefully it's going to be soon, but if it's not, it sucks."

Timonen's mother and both brothers have protein C deficiency also. According to the National Institutes of Health, a mild case of protein C deficiency affects 1 in 500 people. He has been taking Xarelto, a blood thinner, daily. He's still hoping there's a shot that his career extends past 1,092 NHL games.

"So obviously, I'm 39, and if it ends, it ends," Timonen said last weekend, before he knew the clots were disappearing. "It's been a great run. And these four or five months have maybe been a soft landing on what it's going to be next year or the years coming: what it's like to be retired. I'm almost half there, but if there's a fence. I'm like this and the fence goes right in the middle. But I'm looking forward to next week and see what happens, because it's been a long four or five months."

Dave Isaac writes for the (Cherry Hill, N.J.) Courier-Post