The Eastern Conference finals will be a Pennsylvania showdown between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, two of the six expansion clubs to join the league in 1967. They have been rivals for decades, but the young Penguins and rebuilt Flyers don’t have all that much history.

Or do they?

According to AP Sports Writer Alan Robinson, what history they do share coaxed Pens star Evgeni Malkin to say some less-than-complimentary things about his team’s third-round opponent.

In an entertaining look at the history between the two franchises on Monday, Robinson mentioned a few recent incidents that have sparked budding enmity between this spring’s Eastern Conference finalists. Malkin hasn’t forgotten an 8-2 loss in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, when the Flyers bullied the Penguins and knocked them off their game. Flyers fans showered the Pittsburgh bench with popcorn before it was over.

Then there’s the matter of Malkin being cut on the left cheek by the skate of the Flyers’ Mike Richards on March 16. In the teams’ next meeting on April 2, they began fighting less than a minute into Pittsburgh’s 4-2 win, a heated, rough-and-tumble victory that secured the Penguins’ first division crown since 1997-98.

If Philadelphia gained some revenge in the season finale four days later, when a 2-0 victory cost the Penguins the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, a number of Flyers were grumbling. The Penguins rested Sidney Crosby and played a disinterested game.

"Maybe they're scared of us, I don't know," Flyers center Jeff Carter said after the game. "I'm not really into throwing games for matchups in the playoffs. You play to win and you never want to lose a game." By losing their finale, the Penguins faced Ottawa instead of Boston in the first round, and they swept a Senators club that had lost 10 of its final 12 games when the series was over.

It will be Biron in net for sixth-seeded Philadelphia, Marc-Andre Fleury for the No. 2 seed Penguins. Fleury is 8-1 in the postseason and ranks first among the four conference finals starters with a .938 save percentage.

No one has faced more postseason shots than Biron (395 -- an average of 32.9 a game). After allowing four goals in Philadelphia’s Game 1 loss to Montreal in the Eastern Conference semifinals, he posted a .930 save percentage and stopped 133 of 143 shots in four consecutive wins over the Habs.

Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have a long history. For years, it was the Flyers manhandling the Penguins in their 1970s heyday, when Bobby Clarke, Bernie Parent, Bill Barber and Bill Clement anchored talented Philadelphia teams. And the Flyers have won the last three playoff matchups -- in 1989, 1997 and 2000, overcoming a five-goal, eight-point game by Mario Lemieux (1989) and a five-overtime game in Pittsburgh (2000).

This is a great Pittsburgh team, but the Penguins face a key rival that has already knocked off two of the East’s top three seeds going into the conference finals in Pittsburgh Friday night.

Believe it or not, this is the first time the Flyers and Penguins have met in the conference finals. With the juices flowing in the last few games between them, hockey fans may be in for a memorable series.