Remember the witch doctor. Remember Ross Lonsberry in nine seconds. Remember Bobby Clarke's four-tooth smirk and Bernie Parent's impenetrability and 11 consecutive losses anytime, anywhere to the dread orange and black. Remember the 15 ungodly years without a victory in the Commonwealth's other end: a streak of woe-39-3. Remember announcer Gene Hart handing out stat sheets detailing every damned game.

Today, when the Penguins strive to complete their inaugural perfect season against the rival Filthy Flyers after three decades of hostilities, remember those singular worst of times, those winters of discontent.

Mike Lange cannot forget. He has been the one Penguins constant throughout the 1974-89 Spectrum drought, the cross-state clashes, the spilled blood. "They never gave me the key to that city, for all those 42 games," the Hall of Fame announcer joked. Shoot, the Flyers' Hart once blamed that score all on Lange.

"In 1986, I did the fifth game of a five-game playoff series between the Flyers and Rangers for ESPN," Lange recalled. In the pregame, "Gene made it known to everybody, laughingly so in a way but also somewhat serious, that I was there and there was no way the Flyers could lose.

"So, uh. . . ." Pregnant pause.

"The Flyers lost."

Should the Penguins manage to vanquish Philadelphia this afternoon in Mellon Arena, it would mark their eighth consecutive victory against their longtime Goliath, doubling their previous longest streak against the Flyers and upgrading the 5-0-2 head-to-head record of their second Stanley Cup season, 1991-92. It would represent a teeny dose of karma decades in the making. It would be oh so delicious, but only an appetizer.

"That's just a modest eight," Lange said of the potential run of consecutive triumphs. "Only 34 more to go.

"That puts it into perspective. That tells you how long that streak was." To equal the Penguins' 42-game winless streak in Philadelphia, they would need to win every such meeting through early 2012.

For too long in this series, the Penguins were dead on the frozen water. They were the lesser team going so far back as to when general manager Ray Shero's dad was the Flyers' coach, the late Fred Shero. They were beaten out of the gate, Lonsberry's goal nine seconds into one affair -- still the quickest ever against the Penguins -- setting the tone for an 11-0 Spectrum loss Oct. 20, 1977. They were cow-kicked in the closing seconds Dec. 20, 1979, when some orange phantom illegally booted the puck into the net for a 1-1 tie in the days before instant replay. That was how a bunch of 1979-'80 Flyers continued a 35-game unbeaten string that remains an NHL record. That was how their franchise kept the Penguins winless in Philadelphia from a 5-4 loss Feb. 7, 1974, to a 5-3 triumph Feb. 2, 1989, with a meager three ties in between

That triumph at long last arrived the night that the witch doctor visited the City of Brotherly Love.

"It came to an end thanks to Jimmy Krenn and Scotty Paulsen with the witch doctor," Lange said of that WDVE-FM stunt in a Spectrum lot. "I don't know how in the world they decided that was the game they were going to change it. It was like the witch doctor decided, 'This was the game.' It was hilarious."

Hex sakes, it worked. For a couple of months, anyway. In the 1989 Patrick Division finals, the Flyers rallied from a 3-2 deficit to win the series in Game 7 at the then-Civic Arena.

As Lange stressed, so much of this series has been determined by the sheer might of the Philadelphia franchise, one that advanced to the playoffs the past 11 seasons and, after a five-year spell a smidgen below .500, the 15 years before that. This has been a team of Cup-frequent Flyers, reaching the finals six times since 1975. This has been a model-of-consistency club that, when it wasn't clobbering the visiting Penguins by 7-1, 8-1, 9-2, 11-0 or 13-4 inside the Spectrum where it so dominated other clubs, it was beating them in Pittsburgh, too: an 0-9-1 Penguins streak overall was followed by an 0-3-1 stretch, which was followed by an 11-game losing skid that is still their deepest rut against any Original Six or '67 expansion team.

Announcer Mike "Doc" Emrick remembers the late Hart handing him a stat sheet as well, for his team lost there 11 years in a row as New Jersey Devils, Colorado Rockies and Kansas City Scouts. What a crack-up Hart was. What Broad Street Bullies they were: Detroit once was in a similar Spectrum headlock, too.

"It still is a very good rivalry between the two cities and the two teams," Lange said of Pitt-Philly. But what if 2006-07 somehow becomes the start of a decade and a half of Penguins dominance, fueled by Sidney Crosby and the chicklets he lost last year in Philadelphia? Lange laughed uproariously at that thought.

"If I live long enough, I will make up a sheet and give it to the Flyers."