Frank Bialowas is still ‘The Animal’ — but the old Phantoms enforcer now lets you throw the first punch

Frank Bialowas, his cement-like fists tucked into his gloves, sat on the bench and laughed as the Spectrum crowd came unglued. He knew what the fans — the ones who packed the building on South Broad Street where the Bullies once roamed — wanted to see.

Bialowas had his first fight in kindergarten, fought his way through junior hockey, served a year in prison for fighting as a teenager, and fought so much in the minors that he was known simply as “The Animal.” Bialowas loved to fight, seeing the punishing blows as stress relief.

The Phantoms were a minor-league hockey club that played across the parking lot from one of the NHL’s premier teams. Yet they carved out a place in the Philly sports scene, building a cultlike following in the 1990s by attracting fans who had been priced out of the Flyers’ new arena and loved the farm team’s brand of physical play.

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The Animal led the league in penalty minutes, fought nearly every night, and was the team’s main attraction. He had his own billboard and an ad campaign with the Philadelphia Zoo. Long hair flowing as his fists flew, Bialowas was a star. And he could only laugh when the fans started chanting his name, knowing South Philly wanted him to do what he loved.

“He’d look at me and say, ‘Listen, man. I’m going to put you out there, but nothing stupid,’” Bialowas said of Bill Barber, the former Broad Street Bully who coached those early Phantoms teams.

Bialowas nodded, grabbed his stick, and hopped over the boards. Nothing stupid.

Bialowas sat behind the controls of an excavator last month, scooping up slabs of concrete and piling them into a dump truck on Fourth Street in Brooklawn, the South Jersey town just across the Delaware River from where the Spectrum once stood. This is where The Animal, 25 years after punching the Phantoms to a Calder Cup title, now resides.

Bialowas, 52, owns his own concrete construction business, completing jobs that range from patios to warehouse floors to replacing a town’s sidewalks and curbs.

His hockey career — which included three NHL games, two fights, and 12 penalty minutes in 1994 with Toronto — took him everywhere from Western Canada to western Connecticut. But no place felt like Philadelphia. So Bialowas returned after retiring in 2006 and went to work for himself, using the same toughness that made him so popular on the ice.

“It beats the heck out of you, but I like it,” said Bialowas, who lives in Williamstown. “I work with my guys every day. I like making new stuff. It’s like entertainment. You go and make something nice for people and they’re happy. It’s all fun.”

Bialowas averaged nearly four penalty minutes per game during his first two seasons with the Phantoms. He knew how to start a fight — “I would just sucker-punch a goalie,” he said — and knew whom he wanted to target.

“I used to sit down before the game and read all the stats and say, ‘OK. I’m going to fight this guy first. This guy second. And then this guy,’” Bialowas said. “I was half-nuts. That’s the bottom line.”

The Animal is still up for a scrap, but he’s no longer leaving the bench looking for someone to pummel. If someone is rowdy in a bar, Bialowas said he’ll offer to buy him a beer and the chance to walk away. On the job site, his blood pressure rises when someone drives over his safety cones or yells at his crew if their trucks are blocking the road. And if the driver gets out of the car, Bialowas remembers that he’s not at the Spectrum anymore.

“Now I just make people hit me first,” Bialowas said. “Then I say, ‘Did everyone see that?’ I know all the rules. I’m usually really nice. I’m not a bully by any means. You always try to give people a chance.”

It seemed like every team in the 1990s American Hockey League had an animal. The league was physical, the checking was hard, and fighting was frequent.

“There were no easy goals,” said Peter White, who led the AHL in points in 1997-98. “If you went in front of the net, you paid the price.”

The Phantoms won their division in their first three seasons by matching skill players like White and Craig Darby with bruisers like The Animal and Dave MacIsaac. Biolawas, a winger, was so intimidating that he often skated with the first line as a way to protect the goal scorers.

“He was a really good teammate and gave a lot of guys courage,” said Barber, the Hockey Hall of Famer who coached the Phantoms for their first four seasons. “It wasn’t always about the fighting. It was more of making sure that liberties weren’t being taken on our players. He kept the opposition honest with how they played against us.”

Barber said he wanted the Phantoms to share an identity with the Flyers by being a hard-nosed team that played with discipline and honesty. They had to play defense, score goals, and do more than fight. But like his ‘70s Flyers teams, the Phantoms weren’t afraid to drop their gloves.

“We had a tough team,” said MacIsaac. “But Frankie was our toughest.”

Fights were so plentiful that even the goalies needed to be ready. Neil Little asked Bialowas for pointers in the locker room, telling him it was tough to study his technique on the ice since the fights were always near the opposite goal. A few nights later, Bialowas got into a fight in the neutral zone and dragged his foe within just a few feet of Little’s goal.

“He turns to me before he starts swatting this poor kid around and says, ‘Is this close enough for you?’ He managed to beat the kid into a pulp,” Little said. “But that’s just Frankie. He was an entertainer and a wonderful teammate. He would do anything for you, from day one when I met him to right now. If I called him up and needed something, he’s the first guy to say, ‘Yep, I got your back.’ He’s been a refreshing friend for a lot of years.”

Bialowas didn’t need to accept his role as an enforcer as it was the way he always played since he was a 14-year-old in juniors fighting against 20-year-olds.

“It allowed me to beat people up and take everything out on them,” Bialowas said. “What more could you ask for? There’s people who are just scary and I’m one of them. If you hit me, I smile at you. You can’t really hurt me. It’s weird. You just have that capability where you’re not afraid of anything.”

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Fighting soon led him to trouble. He was sentenced to a year in prison when he was 17 as a result of a brawl away from the ice. Roy Sommer, who coached him in juniors, called Bialowas’ house while he was in prison, but his father said he was on vacation. Sommer was coaching in the East Coast Hockey League and wanted a tough guy. He called back a few weeks later. Bialowas was still on vacation.

“He’s like, ‘How long is this vacation?’” Bialowas said. “My dad said, ‘A couple more months.’”

Bialowas’ vacation was finally over and he thought his hockey career was finished. His father told him Sommer was looking for him. Bialowas said he wasn’t interested. Maybe he could just drive a taxi in Winnipeg for his father’s cab company. But his grandfather, knowing Bialowas would probably fight his way back to trouble, told him he had to play hockey and drove him across the Canadian border.

Bialowas joined Sommer in Virginia with the Roanoke Valley Rebels, won three fights in his first game, and a fan stood up and shouted, “This guy’s an animal.” He had his nickname.

“It was off to the races,” said Bialowas, who plans to release a memoir later this year.

The Phantoms won 47 games in their second season and regularly sold out the Spectrum. The tickets were cheap, the hockey was good, and the punches were stiff. Philadelphia loved the new bullies in the old arena.

“You couldn’t ask for a better place to play,” Bialowas said. “Unless you’re a bum and you don’t work hard. People see right through you. You don’t have to be the most talented. As long as you show up and give 100 percent, they know. They’re not stupid people and they’re great fans. As long as you’re willing to play and put it all on the line, they love you.”

They won the Calder Cup in June 1998 in six games and The Animal had blood drained from his swollen knee every day to stay on the ice. A year after flopping in the second round to rival Hershey, Bialowas and the Phantoms were determined to finish the job. When they did, they partied as hard as they played. They went all over town that night and dented the trophy when a player tripped over a velvet rope at a nightclub.

“It was crazy. That was a freak show,” Bialowas said. “That’s your ultimate dream. It’s not the Stanley Cup but it’s the equivalent. It’s something you’ll never forget.”

For some, the Phantoms were a gateway to the NHL. Players like Vinny Prospal, Andy Delmore, and Brian Boucher played for those early teams before moving up. But The Animal never got another chance to get back.

He played parts of three seasons with the Phantoms, was traded in 1999 to Chicago, and bounced around the minors for a bit. He even moonlighted as a pro boxer, winning his debut — a fitting first-round knockout at the Spectrum — in 2005.

There were times when it seemed the Flyers were close to promoting Bialowas, but it never happened.

“I was the toughest person in the system, but instead they were bringing up other guys and using guys who I used to beat up. I used to get aggravated. It was weird. But that’s just hockey. It happens,” Bialowas said. “I truly believe that if I got one game, they couldn’t send me back. But I never got that game. That’s my belief. Right, wrong, indifferent, whatever. That’s what I think happened. How could you justify it? If you give me a game, I’m going to fight three times and the place is going to go ballistic. If you send me back down, they’re going to lose their minds.”

On the job site, Bialowas is starting to pay the price of being The Animal. His back hurts, his knees throb, and he has trouble opening his hands when it’s cold outside. But he doesn’t regret anything.

“It’s all part of life,” Bialowas said. “It is what it is. I had fun. I’m not going to complain. I had a great time. There’s nothing to complain about. God gave me a chance to fulfill a childhood dream. If someone told me I was going to play in the NHL, I would’ve laughed at them.”

He instead holds on to those three games with the Maple Leafs and reminds himself how many people play without making it to the NHL. He remembers his first NHL fight — a fist-flying scrap against tough guy Tony Twist six years after leaving prison — and realizing that everyone back home was watching on TV. Bialowas cherishes the years he spent with the Phantoms and the teammates who became like brothers that he talks to in a group text, sharing stories and busting chops like they did in the locker room.

And he remembers skating onto the ice and listening to the crowd chant his name instead of the coach who told him not to do anything stupid.

“Next thing you know, there’s a huge line brawl and the whole place is going nuts,” Bialowas said. “I get back to the bench and Barber says, ‘And that wasn’t stupid?’ I’m like, ‘Nope.’ I love to entertain and they loved the entertainment. You could beat someone up and not go to jail for it. Beautiful.”