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William (Billy) Burch

NHL, the National Hockey League is a premier professional North American Sports League played in indoor stadiums. It’s divided into two conferences, each comprising of three divisions of ice hockey teams. The league was established in 1917 in Montreal, Quebec and it is composed of 30 teams out of which 24 teams based in U.S. and 6 in Canada. They have a regular season and playoffs leading to the Stanley Cup, which is the NHL Championship final.

William Burch was born 20 November 1900 Yonkers, New York, who played 11 NHL seasons from 1922 to 1933. Harry Burch is often cited as one of the first American-born players to make an impact in the National Hockey League even though he came to Canada at an early age and honed his hockey skills while playing at the Aura Lee rink, Jesse Ketchum Park, and at Cottingham Square neighbourhoods of Toronto.

He was a member of the Ontario Hockey Association and Canadian Junior champion Toronto Canoe Club in 1920 with future Hall of Famers, Roy Worters and Lionel Conacher as teammates. In 1925 Burch won the Hart Trophy as the National Hockey League's most valuable player, but he is best remembered that year as a member of the Hamilton Tigers hockey club that refused to play in the NHL's playoffs because of a contract dispute.

He was only the second player to win both the Hart and Lady Byng Trophies, Nighbor was the first. Only five others Buddy O'Connor, Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Wayne Gretzky and Brett Hull, have been so honoured in the history of the league. When the Tigers moved to New York to become the Americans in 1926 Burch was dubbed Yonkers Billy Burch, the Babe Ruth of hockey, as a marketing ploy. Burch played a total of eleven seasons in the NHL, retiring after splitting the 1932-33 season between Boston and Chicago.

Billy Burch was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1974. He is remembered as a powerful skater with a lethal shot who back-checked responsibly and played the game cleanly. He, with all his dedication and devotion in his play has achieved many goals in his overall hockey-playing career. He had the ability of defeating the opponent easily by giving some extra hard work and efforts.

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