Why Hockey Players Lose Teeth: Olympic Moment Sparks a Closer Look

The Winter Olympics concluded last month, and one of the big stories coming out of the event was the US Hockey Men’s and Women’s teams both bringing home gold medals.  

It was big news, and along with gold medal wins there was also big teeth news, as the hero of the US Men’s Hockey team, Jack Hughes, not only nailed the overtime winning shot but also lost teeth in the process.

They are calling it the “Golden Smile,” as a high stick to his face from a Canadian player shattered his front teeth in the last game. He was shown in pictures that day smiling proudly with a bloodied mouth and missing front teeth, almost like it was a rite of passage for hockey greatness!  Being the tough player that he is, he did not seem to panic at all when he got hit in the 3^rd quarter and saw his own teeth scattered all over the ice in front of him. It must have been painful, but he played through it and didn’t let that stop him from powering through the rest of the game, even into overtime. He even joked in some interviews post-game about America’s top-notch dentists, and did not seem fazed at all by the whole ordeal.

Two years ago I wrote an article about a tooth sacrifice made by a Boston Celtics player en route to winning the NBA basketball championship. However, out of all the sports out there, hockey definitely has the reputation of being the most risky, with the stereotype of hockey players missing teeth. I wondered, though, how accurate this was.

It turns out the reputation is warranted! According to research done for a recent Forbes  article, about 85% of NHL players experience tooth loss or severe dental damage, and the average team loses 1.5 teeth per player. Overall, including both amateur and professional, about 31% of all hockey players experience a mouth or teeth injury. In the United States, sports injuries will knock out an estimated five million teeth annually, with hockey being the number one culprit. That’s a lot of teeth going flying every year!

Luckily for hockey players these days, the advances in dentistry and tooth replacement make for a relatively easy fix compared to decades ago. For Jack Hughes, the Golden Smile paid off with a gold medal.