Billy Burch

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 he was a 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.

After beginning the 1922–23 season with the Westminster Hockey Club 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. 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 to play, the team was disqualified and the Montreal Canadiens, 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.