The Life of NHL Dentists

About 6 months ago I caught a full-swing of a stick to the right side of my mouth/jaw. Cracked my front right tooth in half and broke the next two right-most teeth at the gum-line, and cracked one of my lower teeth off at the top 1/4. Neither top teeth broken at the gum could be saved/or built up so they pulled them. I also had one of my lower teeth, left of center knocked out (yes left of center, I think the top portion of the stick blade came down and slapped that part of my mouth). I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted.

The work they did on the top teeth was pretty much the most painful, least fun medical I've ever had to go through. Pulling those two top teeth that were broke off at the gum-line was extremely unpleasant. At one point the dentist had to put her knee on the chair/left side of my ribs to get enough leverage to pull one of the two. My wife couldn't even watch and said it was like a scene from a movie.

This is after playing hockey since the age of 6 (I'm 52) and not wearing a cage for roughly 30 years (since I stopped playing in college).

I had a very strange desire to buy/put on a full cage a few weeks before this happened and even started to research which to buy but got interrupted and lost my traction on the whole idea.

To date this has run me over 10k and I still have to get my final implants.

And yes I do wear a cage now, and it's crazy how often I catch a stick/puck to the face now. I guess I used up all my karma and was getting lucky for years. I attribute this 'luck' mostly to playing with other ex-college and pro players whom generally know how to keep their stick down and in control.

Incidentally the person that hit me was a female defense-men in a co-ed league; she'd played high level college and was groomed for the women's Olympic team on one point, so I don't fault her, it was a freak accident mostly caused by her being tiny (just over 5ft on skates); if she was an average sized guy out there the stick would have hit me in the half-shield or top of the helmet.

Either way, yeah cage on now and I regret not making the transition sooner.

Also - I give USA Hockey Organization high marks, they have so far covered about 90% of the costs and were easy to deal with. I actually lost my previous job because of all this, I also sustained a concussion (and a partially fractured jaw), and they were not very sympathetic to my drop in production so the coverage from USA Hockey has been a huge positive in all this.

Ok. That was a roller coaster.

Playing rec league years ago, I had always played with a full cage. I decided to go with a half visor to be one of the cool kids. Went to my local shop and it was a bit more expensive than I had planned so I figured I'd wait until the next week to buy it. That week, I took two pucks to the cage. I never did go back to buy the visor.

All a dentist would do would be to wipe off any large debris (as long as noxious chemicals aren't involved, you don't really even want to wash it) and then stick it back in the socket. Maybe pack some cotton rolls around it to keep it in one spot for the first 12 hours or so. Doing this on-scene ASAP is strictly better than waiting until you get to a dentist.

Nobody is making the Show from beer league, better to keep a full mouth of teeth.