This is what we found out. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is a registered trademark of ABG-SI LLC. In hockey, it's the teeth. Nashville will host the NHL Draft for the second time in June. "Losing teeth is a badge of honor. The same goes for Jeannot with Tampa Bay in a trade similar to BriseBois getting Brandon Hagel from Chicago at the deadline a year ago. Doughty had all of his teeth until losing one last year and another one early this season. Trotz is keeping an open mind about Predators coach John Hynes, who is 121-86-16 in his fourth year in Nashville. ESPN writer Dave Fleming takes Mina Kimes on a gory, grueling journey of mouth molds, chiclets, emergency surgery, and more tales of dental hockey horror. This is only partly true. Lafferty, also under contract beyond this year, gives Toronto more forward depth. Lost teeth. Some even suggest that as many as 85% of NHL players have lost teeth in their careers. But Drury only had to trade one first-round pick, a fourth-rounder and two players to St. Louis. He missed just six and a half minutes of the game and returned to the ice, mumbling instructions through numb chipmunk cheeks while setting up the game-tying goal. "It's kind of got a bunch of stuff built up in here so it's always lazy," he said. While they are not 100 percent effective, having a mouth guard is still going to protect you from many dental injuries that you would have otherwise sustained. Ive got two loves in my life: my family and hockey, Poile said. Truth is, there are quite a good number of sacrifices to be done to get to the level of veterans. All of them have elected to skip the tooth fairy and live with the annoyances that accompany not having some of their chiclets. Other players never bothered to replace them, wearing their missing chompers like a badge of honor. It was my first training camp with the Capitals (in 1982) and Barry was an undrafted player, Poile said of their first meeting. As a result, players who just a few years ago would have waited until the offseason, or retirement even, to fix a missing or cracked tooth are repairing their smiles right away. Trying to determine the percentage of NHL players who have missing teeth can be such a tedious task. Trotz and Poile were reunited at Bridgestone Arena on Monday as Trotz was introduced as his replacement. The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired forward Sam Lafferty and defenseman Jake McCabe from Chicago on Monday, their latest big trade that comes in the aftermath of division-rival Tampa Bay making another pre-deadline splash. Nonetheless, you should make efforts to put on your complete kits to avoid some injuries which would have been prevented by your kits. When Brent Burns packs his bags for road trips, the San Jose Sharks defenceman often leaves something behind: His cosmetic teeth. "I believe it was a Tuesday," Grimaldi said. In reviewing the occurrence of oral trauma, we found that 31.4% of participants reported an oral injury as a result of playing ice hockey. Miller, 23, was given a match penalty and ejected late in the first period of the Rangers game against the Kings on Sunday. Burns, a happy-go-lucky guy, said he is missing three of his real teeth and a fourth is "hanging on by a thread." "Just all nubs and blood. His mom, though, still kids him constantly that she wants that braces money back.Kevin Hoffman/Getty Images. Recently, after Florida's Troy Brouwer lost the same two front teeth that Calgary team dentist Kristin Yont had fixed for him when he played for the Flames, he sent her a picture of his wrecking-ball smile while sporting a T-shirt that said it all: 4 out of 5 Dentists Recommend Hockey. Ochi labored over it with his curette for an excruciating 15 minutes while trying to keep his dinner down. Sometimes you cannot brace yourself for a hit or move out of the way in time. Each team keeps a full-time dentist on staff, often seated a few rows behind the bench and armed with a medieval toolkit of needles, forceps, sutures and curettes. Even the slightest force that can break a small bone is capable of knocking your teeth lose irrespective of your mouth protection. "You can only get it fixed so many times before there's nothing there. ", Tournament officials told him not to worry. If a player chooses to wear a mouth guard, he may help his chances of not having a concussion. Sometimes you get new teeth only to have them knocked out again by an elbow or flying stick. Its amazing.. Most NHL arenas have dental chairs somewhere near the locker rooms. And when that hockey player smiles, he must be missing teeth, right? After his crowning achievement, Pavelski returned with a new plastic chin guard and a toothless grin that fit in rather well in San Jose. He and his beautiful smile. . Of course, even with these protections, lost teeth are still common in hockey, as are other injuries to the mouth. . Daniel Carcillo looks like he enjoys losing his teeth. In fact, it is the lifestyle of hockey professionals to walk on the street each day smile smiling with a missing tooth. Kane was selected by the Blackhawks with the No. It also was dress backward day at school. This leaves the bottom row of teeth especially vulnerable in hits to the face. However, research shows that more than 85% of players have either lost a tooth or more. The NHL players missing teeth will either wear a removeable dental appliance that holds the fake tooth/teeth into place. Root canals and veneers and long hours in a dentist's chairare the norm. One thing these players have in common is that they don't seem to care if they have missing teeth, because they continue to smile as if they were models in the dental industry. As manly and jarringly horrific as it was to see Belanger yank out his chopper, the league would be wise to try to protect its players from such terrible injuries. As with every sport, hockey has evolved over the course of decades, and a good deal of equipment has been developed to prevent injury to hockey players, some of which can protect a players teeth. (Although some teams offer their dentists a small honorarium, most receive little more than tickets to the game and an official association with an NHL team -- along with the chance to break the monotony of working on cavities, halitosis and dentures all day.). If the hit is big enough, a mouth guard may not be able to fully protect your teeth. After making his way, ever so gingerly, to the office of Gil Rivera, the Lightning's team dentist, MacDonald opened his mouth and was greeted by terrified silence. Midway through the second period in the Devils' season opener on Oct. 4, a teammate's stick clipped Coleman in the mouth, damaging four teeth and depositing a sandwich of fiberglass splinters that had to be extracted as a prelude to an emergency root canal. The only thing that compares to the dental injuries we see in the NHL would be maybe car crashes, St. Louis team dentist Glenn Edwards said. Still, Coburn didn't want to fly home and miss a chance to represent Canada, so he succumbed to the chair where, using nothing more than thumbs-up and thumbs-down signals to communicate, the Belarusian dentist pummeled him with pulpectomies for nearly three hours. The Lightning won the Stanley Cup back to back in 2020 and 21 and went to the final in 2022. After the final horn blew, signaling another Lightning loss -- back then the team was, shall we say, toothless? In recreational hockey, you will encounter a mix of half visors, face-shields, cages, and plain helmets with no additional protection. The NHL should make mouthguards mandatory. Win-Win! I say, 'No thanks.'". There are some guys that changed franchises that got drafted later.. Grimaldi was having trouble eating, smiling and brushing his teeth in the immediate aftermath of losing them the second time. Its the same length of suspension as Garnet Hathaway got in 2019 for spitting on Anaheims Erik Gudbranson when with Washington. The Blackhawks also made it to the Western Conference final in 2014, losing to the Los Angeles Kings in an epic seven-game series. Players who dont wear full facial protection run the risk of losing teeth. Chicago also acquired Finnish defenseman Vili Saarijarvi from Arizona as part of the trade. Most people would probably imagine a Canadian guy with a mullet, helmet, skates and a stick. On his first night on the job, and at his first hockey game, no less, new Kings dentist Kenneth Ochi sat Callahan down in the chair at Staples Center, took a deep breath and aimed his dental lamp at the side of the player's mouth. How many teeth did Gretzky lose? ", STICKS AND STONES: What's in a name? Dustin Brown Dustin Brown is having what some may view as a resurgence this season. Pro pucksters give the cold, hard facts on everything from lost teeth to Gary Bettman in ESPN The Magazine's poll of anonymous NHL stars. The mouthguard mainly prevents your teeth from crashing against each other when youre involved in a collision. Missing teeth have long been hockey's badge of honor, as NHL players past and present sacrificed their pearly whites in the name of victory. For this reason, every team in the NHL employs a personal dentist to see to the needs of their players, giving them access to the best dental care possible for any injuries they receive. Three months after completing his residency, and new to Florida, he got a message from the senior partner at his dental practice telling him to report downtown to lend a hand with the Lightning. They have the option of having teeth implants /bridges or other dental procedures performed to replace their missing teeth after retirement. As you'd expect, his scoring rate has also dropped, to roughly .7 points per game. Its one of the oldest and most beloved punchlines the sport has outside of the work of Don Rickles. There are so many reasons behind NHLers losing their teeth. -- Rivera looked up to see Tortorella, a notorious hothead, charging in his direction. NEW YORK KAndre Miller of the New York Rangers has been suspended three games for unsportsmanlike conduct for spitting at Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty. The Predators are six points out of the second wild-card spot after falling in the first round of the playoffs the past three seasons. Over the next four months, on off-days and between games, Rivera pieced MacDonald back together again during a dozen visits and more than 50 hours in the chair. Players who will lose their teeth in future to come and. "I hope my career lasts that long," he said, flashing his new sans-front-tooth-smile. College players in the U.S. are required to wear full masks, so a large portion of players arrive in the NHL with all their own teeth. Hell also forfeit $15,000 in salary. Maybe that $124 million dollar contract he signed didn't include dental coverage. We are also concerned about unveiling the greatest sports story ever told. "It's tough learning to eat a sandwich again, something you take a bite out of. Offense. Parcels and Campbell, in their research, really went . This leaves the lower half of the face unprotected. "I was like, 'OK, we need to do [six] root canals right now.' When this happens, you will require a bone graft to fix your jaw. Hall of Famer Chris Pronger has great-looking choppers, though they're not the ones he was born with, and Winnipeg Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien can pop a perfect-looking tooth in and out like he's a magician. Do most hockey players have missing teeth? "A rather macabre collection in Rivera's office includes plaster molds of every Lightning player's teeth. How do Hockey Players Prevent Lost Teeth? Nevertheless, hockey players have almost universally taken the risk to their smiles in stride when choosing to get on the ice, and many even consider losing their teeth a rite of passage as a veteran of the sport. Hockey moves quickly. That makes him, unofficially, the league champion. When players do get hit in the mouth with a stick or puck during a game, they are moments away from getting professional treatment from a team dentist and perhaps an oral surgeon. In 2013 a teammate's slap shot shattered his jaw, damaging 10 of Crosby's teeth. Then I broke them on hard-shell tacos, granola bars, boxing.". The two men have known each other for 41 years, dating back to Poiles time as the Washington Capitals GM. He launched this website in 2018 to help new hockey players and fans learn more about the game and have more fun while learning. His best year was 2009-10, when he scored 35 goals and 67. Lots of teeth. And thats even before the Rangers get Patrick Kane from Chicago, the last highly anticipated trade before the deadline Friday that is hinging on New Yorks salary cap situation. What is the Average Age of Retirement in the NHL? Deadline decisions: What will Avs, Kraken and others do? Chicago is retaining half of McCabes salary. Good To Know: We earn a commission if you click the product links above and make a purchase. By time he reached Milwaukee and the AHL, he'd had extensive dental work done. Some even suggest that as many as 85% of NHL players have lost teeth in their careers. Upon retirement, they can opt-in for getting teeth implants/bridges or other dental work to replace the missing teeth. Yet Long, Rivera and other team dentists now say they can see major changes in the sport of hockey reflected in the improved smiles of their modern-day NHL clients. That same season, the Rangers' Ryan Callahan was bearing down to deliver a check on an L.A. player when the guy turned around at the last second and bayoneted Callahan's mouth, "Game of Thrones" style, with his stick blade. Detroit Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde, an assistant for the Lightning during their three trips to the final, told reporters in Ottawa: Ill never question Julien BriseBois. And Tampa Bay might not be done. In addition, the void caused by the missing tooth can change the shape of your mouth, which puts the neighboring teeth and gums at risk of tooth decay. What do Hockey Players Sniff on the Bench? Bettmann Archive/Getty Images, Long says quicker whistles on wayward sticks have saved a mountain of molars. During his 13 years in Tampa, St. Louis underwent just about every dental procedure imaginable inside Rivera's office. Overview; Leaders; Profile; Mobile; Prize Leagues; Fantasy Shop; NHL Updates. There are some good players. Interestingly, the mouthguard will keep you from biting your tongue or smashing your teeth together. One thing these players have in common is that they don't seem to care if they have missing teeth, because they continue to smile as if they were models in the dental industry. We asked the pros at Hockey Homie what the force of a hockey puck was and they told us that pucks can easily reach speeds up to 100 miles per hour. When you think of the prototypical hockey player, the image that comes to mind may be a rugged warrior with missing teeth. "They're not designed to keep the teeth in the mouth.". His golfing buddies remind him of that every time they play a round at the country club. Knowing his mom had paid a small fortune to his orthodontist, Burns was worried she might knock out his other tooth once she found out. Formula - How to calculate shooting percentage Chicago's Duncan Keith had seven teeth knocked out by a puck in the Western Conference final-clinching game in 2011 against San Jose and quipped afterward: "You've got leave it all on the ice.". Coburn figured that between the swelling and the meds, he must have heard her wrong. Thanks to helmets, high sticks and pucks that began while he was playing junior hockey, Watson's smile has become synonymous with his missing teeth. Points percentage is also used by many leagues such as the NHL and other top level leagues during the course of the regular season . Author of "Noah's Rainbow" (a father's memoir) and "Breaker Boys" (stolen 1925 NFL title). As with every sport, hockey has evolved over the course of decades, and a good deal of equipment has been developed to prevent injury to hockey players, some of which can protect a player's teeth. He was in Minsk, Belarus, at the 2014 world championship when an Italian player took a wild baseball swing at a loose puck and instead cracked Coburn right across the kisser, shattering his entire top row of teeth. FOR DECADES, THE pregame ritual in the NHL was for players to write their numbers on coffee cups, place their teeth inside the cups and leave them on a shelf in their lockers before taking the ice . "But the societal stigma has changed too. If it remains a second-round selection, the Blackhawks will have eight picks in the first three rounds of the upcoming draft. If the guard is not fully on or put on straight, it will not help you if you sustain a hit to the mouth. "The joke was switching teeth around," Sutter said with a sly grin. (Two and a half weeks later, Keith was drinking out of the Cup, presumably through a straw.). If it did, Ovechkin surely would have taken care of his destroyed front teeth. A lot of emotions, to be honest. "A total mess," he says. MacDonald missed a grand total of one game. Notwithstanding, there are plenty of circumstances where players lost their teeth despite wearing the best mouthguard. Ive been in coaching for a long time so I know when a team is well-coached, Trotz said. In hockey, that's just part of the drill. And can mouthguards really save your teeth? Also Sunday, New Jersey acquired big winger Timo Meier from San Jose, and NHL-leading Boston got defenseman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway from Washington on Thursday. In the meantime, Watson, who said he has a bone graft in his mouth and is ready for post-playing teeth,will live without his apples. Hockey is a game that involves too many collisions between players. Maybe a crooked nose from all the fights and high-sticks. Other sports with a goalie such as field hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and water polo also use SH%. He has 14 seasons with at least 21 goals and 13 years with at least 40 assists. According to the story, only about half of the leagues players wear mouthguards. He just signed a three-year, $4.5 million extension, so new ones will have to wait at least that long. Sometimes special things when it comes to Rocco Grimaldi's sticks, having trouble eating, smiling and brushing his teeth, Predators forward Austin Watson's girlfriend opens up about addiction, his arrest, mental health, signed a three-year, $4.5 million extension, courtesy of an errant high stick from teammate Roman Josi, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Indeed, Lesson No. NHLers like Brent Burns and Drew Doughty exemplify the look of a hockey player: long hair, a beard and several missing teeth! Team doctors reconnected the filleted parts of MacDonald's face with 75 sutures, then sent him home, where he sat on the couch until dawn, jolted awake by even the slightest puff of air passing over a mouthful of raw, exposed nerves. The mouthguard only covers the top row of teeth, as the player bites from the top to keep it in place. The Coyotes received a 2025 third-rounder from the Rangers to retain 25% of Kanes salary, with the Blackhawks paying 50%. Fantasy. Even Sidney Crosby, the face of the NHL, has a reassembled smile. Despite player safety being scrutinized by the league more than ever and technological advances in equipment, hockey players are going to lose teeth. In some cases, the player may not be wearing a mouth guard or perhaps wore it incorrectly and got hit in the mouth area. Craig Smith'sunwitting extraction occurred in September, during a preseason a game against the Panthers. So naturally, we decided to come up with a list of current and former NHL players who had the worst smiles in league history. Since the beginning, hockey has had a reputation of being a rough game. My job, my responsibility as the custodian for this group is to sometimes take risks to maximize our return for this era.. If the hit is big enough, a mouth guard may not be able to fully protect your teeth. What do you picture in your head when you think of a typical hockey player? 1 in hockey: Sooner or later, everyone answers to the dentist. A whopping 98 percent . But what can players do to protect themselves from this painful injury? Missing percentage points to 100 percent are probably due to rounding. Percentage Of Hockey Players With Missing Teeth. Others decline dental work for an entirely different reason: Some of the toughest athletes in the world are just as terrified of dentists as the rest of us. It felt like somebody put a fishhook in there and was pulling down on the roof of my mouth. ", #Preds forward Craig Smith lost a tooth I guess tonight and it could not be more apparent than when he says faces here. "After seeing how many lips had been on the Cup, I gave it the slightest little kiss I could and then I went and disinfected my mouth," Rivera says. "That can be extremely painful because you have somebody that's already hurting. Oh, that poor guy.". In the 1960s and '70s, the game's giants, players like Clarke, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe and Stan Mikita, created the enduring and strangely charming archetype of the toothless hockey warrior. In a message posted on social media Monday, Miller called his actions completely accidental., I would never intend to do something like that on purpose, Miller wrote. And the respect he earned from then-Lightning coach John Tortorella garnered him the most ice time of his 16-year pro career -- as well as a friend, and a dentist, for life. For example, Keith Tkachuks injury was so brutal that he had to get a transplant from his hip bone to restore his upper jaw just so he could have false teeth implantedand its not even clear if the procedure will be successful just yet. Yet, even when wearing a mouth guard, it seems that a lot of players still suffer from tooth loss. They've all had their teeth knocked out on the job -- and some of them off the job. Recess was a few hours later. So he often installs grafts to preserve the bone. Its ridiculous that these players have to go through these devastating injuries.. For starters, fewer fights and fewer head shots mean fewer lost teeth, obviously. Most important in the protection of teeth are mouthguards, which are worn by about 90% of NHL players.Mouthguards can protect a players teeth from the force of certain blows, but even they are not foolproof, and many have failed to protect players from the force of a speeding puck to the teeth.Nevertheless, they are valuable resources that all hockey players should use to avoid injury. Keep the spac from collapsing/closing in from the existing teeth moving towards the open gaps. While keeping missing teeth missing can be viewed as a badge of honor in the NHL, the truth is, it also eliminates a lot of pain, Watson said. This move could set them up for another deep run, no matter the cost. This is why many athletes in the hockey game have lost their teeth despite wearing enough kits to protect themselves. For the rest of the world, the eyes might be the windows into the soul. He then stops the bleeding, providesanesthetics and, oftentimes, sends them back to the ice. Winning percentage is one way to compare the record of two teams; however, another standard method most frequently used in baseball and professional basketball standings is games behind. Anyways, a huge reason as to why hockey players aren't the best looking of people, is because a ton of them are missing their teeth, and seeing them smile is just miserable/terrifying. A closer look revealed that a large portion of Callahan's exposed jawbone was covered in a strange black substance. Missing teeth have long been hockey's badge of honor, as NHL players past and present sacrificed their pearly whites in the name of victory. People hit their faces on the steering wheel or theyre not buckled in and they hit the dash. The light shined straight through to the floor. In reviewing the occurrence of oral trauma, we found that 31.4% of participants reported an oral injury as a result of playing ice hockey. MORE: Predators forward Austin Watson's girlfriend opens up about addiction, his arrest, mental health. Sportblis presents intriguing historical facts of various sporting clubs around the world. Listen. It was Dec. 21, 2007, and with 1:51 left to play, the Tampa Bay Lightning winger, working in his own zone, stepped in front of an errant, elevated slap shot that instantly cleaved a grisly, bloody and impossibly wide swath of carnage through MacDonald's lips, gums and tongue before reducing nine of his teeth to dust. With pucks, sticks and fists flying in all directions at players who famously refuse all means of protection, tooth trauma and trips to the dentist -- most people's worst nightmare -- are as inherent to hockey as ice. Top 6 Best Men's College Hockey Teams of All Time, Top 6 Best Men's Ice Hockey Players Of All Time, Top 6 Best Women's College Hockey Teams of All Time, Top 6 Best Womens Ice Hockey Players Of All Time. As to why he hasn't gotten them fixed, Ill probably get them fixed at some point. "Its pretty bad when you can look across the room and you see a bunch of teeth dangling," Ames said. High sticks are the most common cause, but pucks to the mouth do happen and can cause very serious damage. The team chaperone and Russian translator took one look at Coburn's hamburger face and screamed "Nyet!" As a member of the gnarliest and most peculiar fraternity in sports, Rivera has seen it all during his 17 years practicing dentistry in the NHL: a Tooth Fairy teammate delivering goalie Ben Bishop's incisors to the bench for safekeeping; winger Ondrej Palat holding up half his bottom teeth with his tongue after getting lightsabered by an overeager rookie in practice; veterans, like Tomas Tatar, whom Rivera calls "Humpty Dumpties" because they have lost the same three front teeth on four separate occasions; marquee talent in need of work (and a bit of courage) hiding from him at the arena; and a notorious tough guy silently sweating through his clothes during an especially tough bicuspid extraction that Rivera compares to King Arthur pulling Excalibur out of the stone. 3. The first thing he does when such injuries occur check for jaw fractures. Missing teeth have been associated with hard-nosed hockey for better and for worse for decades, becoming a stereotype of the game even with some players, like Burns, embracing it as a rite of passage or badge of honour. It may sometimes fail you, depending on the magnitude of the force that is exerted during the collision. before running out of the room crying. Simply put, losing teeth is so common in hockey because hockey is a contact sport that features a number of inherent dangers to a persons teeth. Then came a puck. ", LIGHTNING DEFENSEMAN Braydon Coburn understands the terror. "My team doctors want me to wear one. Wearing a visor or no facial protection can be convenient and add style to your on-ice appearance, but you should know the risks of doing so! Predators Austin Watson, Rocco Grimaldi, Craig Smith and Viktor Arvidsson know this. But Fitzgerald also pointed out the Lightning are still the best of the East until someone beats them. 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