The original Wings were the Broad Street Bullies of lacrosse. They even had a Flyers goalie on the team.

The fans who turned the Spectrum into a frenzy that afternoon were gone, leaving the arena mostly empty a few hours after the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup. But the visitors’ dressing room was still being used and the Wings — a professional lacrosse team that launched a week earlier in May 1974 — needed to get in. Their first home game was that night.

The lacrosse players asked a teenager helping in the Wings publicity department to kick out the three Boston Bruins who were still hanging around after they lost to the Broad Street Bullies. There was no one else around to help.

“It was just me,” said Andy Abramson, then a 14-year-old from Second and Cheltenham. “These were like my big brothers, so I figured I had to do what was right for them.”

Abramson walked up to Phil Esposito, said, “Excuse me,” and the Bruins star turned around with a cigar in his mouth.

“I said, ‘Hi, guys. Sorry you lost. We have another game tonight and we need the locker room,” Abramson said. “Esposito looked up at me like, ‘You have to be kidding me, kid.’”

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But the kid wasn’t alone. Two Spectrum security guards — huge guys as imposing as the Bullies who just won the Cup — trailed behind.

“The one guard, John Turner,” Abramson said. “He just said, ‘Can we help you with your bags, boys?’ They looked up and saw the two humongous guards and they got up and left.”

And that’s how the Wings — a team that lasted just two seasons in the six-team National Lacrosse League — got their start. The lacrosse players brought the ferocity of the Broad Street Bullies as they checked, fought, and even broke a few of their opponents’ noses. One player played a season with a metal pipe after his stick broke. They even had a former Flyer — goalie Doug Favell — on their team.

It has been 50 years since the original Wings played their final game — the league folded after two seasons — and they’ll reunite this weekend in South Philly, when they meet fans before the current Wings play the Albany FireWolves on Saturday night at 7 at the Wells Fargo Center.

They were a bunch of tough Canadians who had jobs back home and came to Philly on the weekends in the summer to play a sport that was foreign to most of the region. First, they had to get into their dressing room.

“The Wings were very much the Broad Street Bullies on sneakers,” Abramson said.

Favell used a press credential to get into Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Final. Just 13 months before, he was in net for the Flyers when they lost to Montreal in the semifinals. The Flyers traded him to Toronto in the summer of 1973 to bring back Bernie Parent, who had been Favell’s teammate a few years earlier in Philly.

The Wings drafted Favell, who moonlighted as a lacrosse player in the summer and is the son of a Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Famer. Hockey, he said, was his job and lacrosse was his passion. But Favell had back surgery after the NHL season, so he was not ready for the start of the National Lacrosse League. The Wings, knowing how popular Favell had been in Philly, flew him in to be a TV commentator for their home opener.

The Flyers’ old goalie arrived at the Spectrum early that day and sat in the press box to watch his old teammates win the Stanley Cup.

“We just needed Bernie,” said Favell, who joined Parent on the inaugural 1967-68 Flyers team. “I got to the semifinals, but I think they needed Bernie to get the rest. The way he played for those two years was unbelievable.”

Favell went into the dressing room after the game to see his buddies. It was special, he said. Favell used to ride the trolley with Barry Ashbee from 69th Street to Penn for practice. Those Flyers did everything together — from hanging at Rexy’s bar in South Jersey to playing softball to drinking in Avalon — and now they were champions. But Favell was in the press box.

“Obviously, the disappointment was there,” Favell said. “I cashed in with a big contract [with Toronto], but it cost me a Cup. It would have been special to win a Cup or two, but there’s nothing that can be done to change history.”

The Wings practiced twice a week in Peterborough, Ontario, and Favell drove the two hours there from his home in St. Catharines. They then flew from Toronto to wherever they were playing that weekend. For Favell, it was a great way to spend the summer as he was playing the game he loved with guys he knew since he was a kid. A goalie in hockey, Favell played forward in lacrosse while the Wings used a Canadian postman in net.

The only problem was that Favell’s six-year contract with Toronto said he could not play another sport. But how would the Maple Leafs ever find out about him playing lacrosse in Philadelphia? Eventually they did and that was it for Favell’s side gig.

“They said, ‘This is not going to work. You’re not playing lacrosse next year.’ I said, ‘OK,’” Favell said.

The Wings didn’t draft Favell merely to sell tickets, as he was a legitimate lacrosse player. But it didn’t hurt that he was popular in Philly. Favell was a character. In 1970, he became the first goaltender to paint his mask. Favell says he was first because Boston’s Gerry Cheevers simply painted “stitches” onto his. Favell wore an actual colored mask.

He asked Flyers equipment manager Frank Lewis to paint his mask orange two days before Halloween. The Flyers won that night and he wore it the rest of the season.

“It just caught on after that,” Favell said. “Guys were like, ‘Yeah, I want to paint my mask.’ It was that simple. There wasn’t anything genius behind it.”

Favell kept the orange mask until he allowed a goal with four seconds left against Buffalo in the 1972 season finale, which kept the Flyers from the playoffs. The mask was no longer lucky. Lewis painted an orange, black, and white design that they called the “Sunburst.” An eye doctor told Favell that the bright mask could be an advantage since an oncoming skater’s eyes would naturally be attracted to the brightest thing they saw.

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“We’re probably talking millions of a second, but it was something,” Favell said. “But I said, ‘Here’s my edge.’”

Favell was bummed out to be traded and many initially thought the Flyers gave up too much for Parent. The Flyers won back-to-back Stanley Cups and Favell spent five more seasons in the NHL. Before he left for Toronto, Favell picked up his equipment bag in the Spectrum. Lewis had one more surprise: He painted a blue Maple Leaf on Favell’s mask.

“Favell was a hell of a good lacrosse player,” Abramson said. “He was also a pro’s pro. He didn’t walk in like, ‘I’m Joe Hockey Player.’ He came in to work. The crowd went absolutely wild when he came out to play for us.”

Abramson stood on the concourse during Flyers games next to a TV showing lacrosse highlights and handed out Wings pamphlets, hoping to sell tickets to the new team’s games.

The Flyers were hot in the early 1970s while the city’s other teams were not. The Phillies were lousy, the Eagles stank, and the 76ers were still a few years from landing Dr. J. So there was a place for teams like the Wings and the Atoms, a professional soccer team that played at Veterans Stadium.

The Wings played box lacrosse, a style of the game that is much faster and more physical than the traditional game that was mostly confined locally to the Main Line at that time. The team was owned by Dave Natale and Ed Tepper, who was a friend of Flyers owner Ed Snider. The Wings tried to appeal to the fans who filled the Spectrum for the Flyers.

“Philadelphia was Flyer crazy,” Abramson said. “You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing orange, black, and white. People were like, ‘This is like hockey without skates.’ That’s how they looked at box lacrosse. We basically wanted to be the summer Flyers.”

It worked. The Wings nearly sold out their home opener and led the league in attendance. They were covered by the newspaper sports sections, featured on local TV news, Gene Hart called their games, and they even appeared on The Mike Douglas Show. The players wore long hair and short shorts. It was the 1970s and the Wings were a thing.

“The team took off,” Abramson said. “Everything we did, the media loved us. We had press galore and we’re looked upon as the cool kids in town. These guys are from Canada. By daytime, they delivered Coca-Cola and worked in hydroelectric plants. Then they would fly away to play lacrosse.”

Fred Shero, the legendary Broad Street Bullies coach, allowed Wings coach Bobby Allan to use his Spectrum office and then asked Allan how the Wings approached the power play. Allan was a lacrosse legend in Canada and a high school principal. Shero once traveled to Russia just to mine new ideas, so the Bullies coach was always searching, even when he was watching the Wings. A year later, the Flyers fused some of Allan’s lacrosse ideas into their power play.

Like the Flyers, the Wings had players who could fight such as brothers Carm and Mike Collins, and Terry Rowland could throw punches like Dave Schultz. But like the Bullies, the Wings were more than brawlers. There was an art to their game with talented players like Larry Lloyd, John Grant, and Jimmy Wasson.

“Bobby Allan was a thinking man’s coach,” said Abramson, whose communications career included a stint with the Flyers when he created the still-running Mites on Ice promotion. “Bobby Allan was Freddy Shero on the box.”

The Wings finished the 1974 regular season in first place but lost to Rochester in the championship. They missed the postseason the next year and then the league folded as attendance outside Philadelphia flagged. The Wings returned in 1987 under different owners. The original team had a short run. But it was memorable. First, a kid had to kick the Bruins out of their dressing room.