When Lach retired in 1954, he was the league's all-time leading scorer and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame twelve years later.

Elmer was the youngest of two boys and four girls born to William and Mary-Ann Lach, who arrived in Canada from Eastern Europe in 1910.

Against the wishes of his Baptist parents, Elmer would sneak away to play ice hockey on a local pond instead of attending church on Saturday mornings.

[2] In Regina, Lach would work at the team's owner's pool hall, racking balls for 25 cents per day.

He moved again in 1938 to star for two seasons for the senior Moose Jaw Millers,[3] playing hockey in the winter for $75 a month and baseball in the summer, where he would be paid $2.50 per game behind the plate.

Lach had a job reading meters for the National Light & Power Co., and one day he met Kay in her home.

[2] That same year, Lach's mother died and his father moved to Vancouver, beginning a lifelong estrangement from his son.

According to Montreal Gazette columnist Dave Stubbs, Elmer wired Kay the message "Nice going, honey.

"[6] Rejecting the Maple Leafs' assessment, the Montreal Canadiens signed Lach as a free agent on October 24, 1940.

With the arrangement of Moose Jaw's owner Cliff Henderson, Montreal player-scout Paul Haynes paid Lach $100 for his rights, "more money than I'd had in my pocket in my life.".

[4] In the 1943–44 season, Montreal head coach Dick Irvin tried a line combination of Lach at centre, Maurice Richard on the right wing, and Toe Blake at left.

In the 1953 Stanley Cup Finals against the Boston Bruins, Lach scored the cup-winning goal at 1:22 of overtime in the fifth game of the series.

When the playoffs began, Lach was no longer a full-time player, but he was inserted into the lineup in the 1954 Stanley Cup Finals when Montreal fell behind in the series.

[6] According to Ted Reeve, curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame in the 1950s, any pictorial record of the 1940s NHL would have to include prints of Lach's X-rays.

According to writer Trent Frayne, "To some, [Elmer Lach] is hockey’s greatest competitor; to others, ‘the nastiest so-and-so in the league‘, in a 1950 article in the Saturday Evening Post.

[4] On December 4, 2009, coinciding with the Canadiens centennial celebration, his jersey number, 16, was retired a second time to honour Lach (along with Emile Bouchard's No.

[14] On March 28, 2015, Lach suffered a stroke at a long-term care facility in Beaconsfield, Quebec, where he had moved after Lise's death.

[6] He never regained consciousness and on April 4, 2015, died at the West Island Palliative Care Residence in Kirkland, Quebec.