Billy Burch ✝

Burch won the Hart Trophy as the NHL\'s most valuable player in 1924–25. In that same season, he joined his teammates in precipitating the first player\'s strike in NHL history and which led to the dissolution of the Hamilton franchise. Transferring to the newly formed New York franchise, Burch served as the team\'s captain, scored the first goal in Americans\' history in 1925 and won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1926–27 as the NHL\'s most gentlemanly player. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1974.\n', ' Burch was born on November 20, 1900, in Yonkers, New York, but moved to Toronto at a young age and grew up in the Ontario capital as a multi-sport athlete playing lacrosse, football and hockey. In football, Burch played quarterback for the Toronto Central YMCA team that won the provincial junior championship in 1920. That same year was teammate of Lionel Conacher and Roy Worters with the Toronto Canoe Club Paddlers hockey team which won the 1920 Memorial Cup as the Dominion champions of Canada. Burch led all players in the Memorial Cup playoffs with 42 goals, 12 assists and 54 points in 12 games. He spent the following two seasons with the Toronto Aura Lee team in the Ontario Hockey Association.\n', ' After beginning the 1922–23 season with the New Haven Westminsters in the United States Amateur Hockey Association, Burch was signed to a contract by the Hamilton Tigers on January 30, 1923. He joined a Tigers team that was last in the four-team NHL, but which improved as he did. After scoring six goals in ten games to finish that season, Burch finished in a tie for third in NHL scoring in 1923–24 with 22 points. The Tigers finished 1924–25 as the regular season champions with a 19–10–1 record, and Burch was voted the winner of the Hart Trophy as the league\'s most valuable player following a 20-goal regular season.\n', '