Harry Wilfred Burch (November 20, 1900 – November 30, 1950) was an American-born, Canadian professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice ...

forward who played in the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey sports league, league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranke ...

(NHL) for the

Hamilton Tigers The Hamilton Tigers were a professional ice hockey team based in Hamilton, Ontario. They competed in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1920 to 1925. The Tigers were formed by the sale of the Quebec Bulldogs NHL franchise to Hamilton intere ...

New York Americans The New York Americans, colloquially known as the Amerks, were a professional ice hockey team based in New York City from 1925 to 1942. They were the third expansion team in the history of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the second to play ...

Chicago Black Hawks (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and

Boston Bruins The Boston Bruins are a professional ice hockey team based in Boston. The Bruins compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The team has been in existence since 1924, making ...

. Born in

Yonkers, New York Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as en ...

, Burch grew up in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

and scored 42 goals in 12

Memorial Cup The Memorial Cup () is the national championship of the Canadian Hockey League, a consortium of three major junior ice hockey leagues operating in Canada and parts of the United States. It is a four-team round-robin tournament played between t ...

playoff games to lead the Toronto Canoe Club Paddlers to the 1920 Canadian junior championship. Burch won the

Hart Trophy The Hart Memorial Trophy, originally known as the Hart Trophy, is an annual award for the most valuable player in the National Hockey League (NHL), voted by the members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association. The original trophy was dona ...

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 Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

, 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 The Hockey Hall of Fame (french: Temple de la renommée du hockey) is a museum and hall of fame located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League (NHL) rec ...

in 1974.

Early life

Burch was born on November 20, 1900, in

, but moved to

at a young age and grew up in the Ontario capital as a multi-sport athlete playing

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

and hockey. In football, Burch played

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Am ...

for the Toronto Central

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

team that won the provincial junior championship in 1920. That same year he was a teammate of

Lionel Conacher Lionel Pretoria Conacher, MP (; May 24, 1900 – May 26, 1954), nicknamed "The Big Train", was a Canadian athlete and politician. Voted the country's top athlete of the first half of the 20th century, he won championships in numerous sports. ...

and

Roy Worters Roy Thomas "Shrimp" Worters (October 19, 1900 November 7, 1957) was a Canadian professional Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender who played twelve seasons in the National Hockey League for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Montreal Canadiens and New York American ...

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 The Toronto Aura Lee Hockey Club operated junior ice hockey and senior ice hockey teams in the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) from 1916 to 1926. They played at Arena Gardens in Toronto. In January 1925, the trustees of the Aura Lee Athletic Clu ...

team in the

Ontario Hockey Association The Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) is the governing body for the majority of junior and senior level ice hockey teams in the Province of Ontario. The OHA is sanctioned by the Ontario Hockey Federation along with the Northern Ontario Hockey As ...

NHL career

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 record, and Burch was voted the winner of the

as the league's most valuable player following a 20-goal regular season. The NHL had expanded by two teams that season and the schedule increased from 24 to 30 games, however Burch and his teammates were not paid any extra compensation by the Tigers. In protest, the players demanded that the team and league pay each individual $200 for the additional regular season and playoff games, or they would refuse to play the NHL championship series. After defying an order by league president

Frank Calder Frank Sellick Calder (November 17, 1877 – February 4, 1943) was a British-born Canadian ice hockey executive, journalist, and athlete. Calder was the first president of the National Hockey League (NHL), from 1917 until his death in 1943. He ...

to play, the team was disqualified and the

Montreal Canadiens The Montreal CanadiensEven in English, the French spelling is always used instead of ''Canadians''. The French spelling of ''Montréal'' is also sometimes used in the English media. (french: link=no, Les Canadiens de Montréal), officially ...

, who won the semi-final series, were declared league champions. The Tigers' actions constituted the first player's strike in NHL history. The Tigers franchise was sold and relocated for the 1925–26 season. The franchise became the

, and Burch was named the team's

, a position he would hold until 1932. The team played up his New York birth; he was dubbed both "Yonkers Billy Burch" and "the

Babe Ruth George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Su ...

of hockey". Burch scored the first goal in Americans' franchise history on December 2, 1925, in a 2–1 victory over the

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...

, and finished the season eighth in league scoring with 25 points. He again finished eighth in scoring, with 27 points, in 1926–27, and was voted the winner of the Lady Byng Trophy, awarded for his "effectiveness and a true sporting spirit". Following a last-place finish in the Canadian Division, the Americans revamped their roster for the 1928–29 season. Of the team's regulars the past season, only Burch and Lionel Conacher were retained. Burch scored 11 goals and 16 points for New York and played the only two playoff games of his NHL career after the team improved to a second-place finish. He scored only 10 points in 1929–30 before improving to 22 points in each of the following two campaigns. Approaching the end of his career, Burch was sold by New York to the

prior to the 1932–33 season. However, he did not see much playing time in Boston in the first part of the season and on January 17, 1933, was traded to the

in exchange for

Vic Ripley Victor Merrick Ripley (May 30, 1906 – March 26, 1962) was a Canadian hockey centerman who played seven seasons in the National Hockey League for the Chicago Black Hawks, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and St. Louis Eagles. He also played seve ...

. Burch suffered a broken leg at the end of the season which spelled the end of his playing career. Burch was the last active NHL player who had played with the Hamilton Tigers. Burch retired to Toronto, where he died in 1950. ''

Montreal Gazette The ''Montreal Gazette'', formerly titled ''The Gazette'', is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Three other daily English-language newspapers shuttered at various times during the second half of t ...

'' sportswriter

Tommy Shields Thomas Charles Shields (born August 14, 1964) is an American professional baseball coach and former infielder. Shields was an infielder in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1992 to 1993 for the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago Cubs. In 2021, Shields w ...

praised Burch as a quality NHL player: "He broke in and played in the days when the going was rough and a player had to be good to stick. If you didn't make it, there was no going back to the amateur ranks. Billy turned pro and never looked back. He was a major leaguer all the way." He was posthumously inducted into the

in 1974.

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

Awards and honours

References

*''Career statistics'':

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Burch, Billy 1900 births 1950 deaths American emigrants to Canada Boston Bruins players Chicago Blackhawks players Hamilton Tigers (ice hockey) players Hart Memorial Trophy winners Hockey Hall of Fame inductees Ice hockey players from New York (state) Ice hockey people from Toronto Lady Byng Memorial Trophy winners New York Americans players Sportspeople from Yonkers, New York