I suspect that the pitot story might be one of those folkloric tales of aviation ....
Long time since I have been near the little Piper so I can't recall the pitot static configuration specifically. However, generally the system (on most, if not all, aircraft) is not overly sensitive to the pitot orientation compared to static port airflow problems. In general, any aircraft in a significant slipping attitude is going to have questionable pressure indications, for which the PEC charts are not applicable ...