Lace Up: The Sudden Death Kid they came to call him, that spring of 1939. Mel Hill was a right winger, at the time, for the Boston Bruins, a 24-year-old product of Argyle, Manitoba, who was playing in his second NHL season. The Bruins’ Stanley Cup semi-finals series against the New York Rangers was the first in NHL history to go to seven games, with Boston prevailing on the strength of Hill’s three overtime winners. In early April of ’39, he ended the deciding game when he Bill Cowley set him up in the third overtime to put a puck past Bert Gardiner. Hill another two (non-overtime) goals in the Finals that year as the Bruins dismissed the Toronto Maple Leafs in five games to take the Cup. Hill won another Cup with Boston in 1941 before going the Leafs, with whom he won a third championship in 1945. Mel Hill died on a Thursday of this date in 1996 at the age of 82. (Image: Leslie Jones, Boston Public Library)