8 ms·

The Life of NHL Dentists

173 points by evo_9 7y ago

evo_9 7y ago
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.
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  "I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted." I am shuddering. This is Cronenberg levels of body horror. I suppose I must have known this was how it worked, but I figured there was more to it than that and that dentists had to do something more dentist-y to make it take.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    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.
    - badger_bravo 7y ago
      Would it still take root if it was placed in backwards? If it was someone else's tooth? a particularly well shaped rock?
      - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
        It depends, but there's an issue of biocompatibility similar to any organ transplant. So no, a rock wouldn't work. The backwards tooth though is interesting - my guess is if it would fit it would stick (although it would definitely fuck up your bite). https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transplants/ https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transpl...
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised if a backwards tooth could remain viable. This is the sort of error that would be noticed immediately by any conscious patient, however. A backwards tooth would mess up occlusion. Few people would ignore the fact that they can't close their mouth completely.
  - 7y ago
psychometry 7y ago
Last I checked, college and professional women's leagues mandated face protection. Why don't men's?
- bsznjyewgd 7y ago
  Not only that, but the NHL BANS full face protection unless you're recovering from an injury. (Ex-all star Dany Heatley spent most of his career wearing a comically big half-visor after suffering a serious eye injury, I wonder if he would've opted for a full visor if given the choice.) Some players already dislike the currently mandated half-visors (visors can distort vision, or fog up, etc.) and do weird shenanigans like having small or tipped-up visors. There's also a fighting culture in North American professional hockey which would be destroyed by mandatory full face protection.
  - krisgee 7y ago
    >There's also a fighting culture in North American professional hockey which would be destroyed by mandatory full face protection. Having grown up playing hockey in a pretty rough league that's not true. You just hook your hand under the back of the helmet and pull, it'll pop right off.
    - rhcom2 7y ago
      There was a recent rule change that bans players from removing their own helmet (but not their opponent's) before a fight and the threat of punching hard plastic doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      With a full cage? Either the wearer has deliberately made that possible, or it'll hurt. I was kept mine so that I could get it on and off without unclipping the cage, but as snug as possible while still allowing that. So pulling it off isn't quick, and I wouldn't fancy someone else doing it.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    The “fighting culture” in the NHL (perhaps more in the AhL and college leagues?) can’t die soon enough. It’s already better than it used to be in the 80s and 90s but there is some way to go. A good first step would be actual match penalties for proper fights. It has worked elsewhere.
THansenite 7y ago
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.
- u10 7y ago
  Nobody is making the Show from beer league, better to keep a full mouth of teeth.
- roter 7y ago
  I too play with a cage in a beer league. I'm used to the more limited visibility. I've seen too many horrors on the ice. The puck has eyes of its own. It still seems to find my unprotected bits.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I wonder why the 50/50 ones (visor top with cage underneath) aren’t more popular? Juniors/Women I think are required to wear regular cages but for recreational players you’d think more would wear that type? I got a used pro players helmet from my team for $20 after the season (they sell off all their gear to fans) which is great bargain for a really nice piece of equipment - but I wouldn’t dare playing games with it because it’s a visor obviously. I look like one of the cooler dads at the 4year olds’ skate practice though.
  - soperj 7y ago
    Because visors suck? They fog up and if they get wet you have to clean them.
    - alkonaut 7y ago
      Visits are basically mandated everywhere now (just the NHL will take 10 more years while everyone else has already made them mandatory) If you are required to wear a visor anyway it feels like the version with a few bars covering the teeth/jaw can’t fog up that much more than just the visor alone?
leblancfg 7y ago
That article is so evocative and well-written, I feel I'll be coming back to it just to steal some expressions.
- ydnaclementine 7y ago
  Always a casual sports fan, I recently started reading ESPN daily after getting into fantasy football/basketball, and their writers are really good. And they have sport specific RSS feeds https://www.espn.com/espn/news/story?page=rssinfo https://www.espn.com/espn/news/story?page=rssinfo
smacktoward 7y ago
Back in colonial times, a common part of two people getting married was the bride's father paying to have all her teeth pulled and replaced with a set of false teeth -- because the state of dental hygiene was so bad then that it was just assumed that she would lose all her teeth eventually, and that way the husband wouldn't have to bear the expense of dealing with it. It was a kind of dowry. I look at those photos and wonder if something similar wouldn't be a nice benefit for newly minted pro hockey players.
- koboll 7y ago
  Source? That's an amazing fact
  - gwern 7y ago
    I've heard this before, but about England and only as something relatively rare: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/smile-a-perfect-smile-but-dont-laugh-we-have-officially-lost-our-dentures-1336158.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/smile-a-perf...
    - J-dawg 7y ago
      In 'Road to Wigan Pier', George Orwell found that many working class people saw their teeth as an inconvenience to get rid of as soon as possible. > Several dentists have told me that in industrial districts a person over thirty with any of his or her own teeth is coming to be an abnormality. In Wigan various people gave me their opinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible. 'Teeth is just a misery,' one woman said to me. In one house where I stayed there were, apart from myself, five people, the oldest being forty-three and the youngest a boy of fifteen. Of these the boy was the only one who possessed a single tooth of his own, and his teeth were obviously not going to last long. http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html
      - gwern 7y ago
Vysero 7y ago
Here I am complaining about my recent gum grafting surgery...
kseo3l 7y ago
I always thought that the dentists would have a lot of work, but has someone asked to the massagists? lol
- SilasX 7y ago
  I was going to correct you, but apparently "massagist" is a standard term; I'd only ever heard masseur(m.)/masseuse(f.). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/massagist https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/massagist
  - 40four 7y ago
    Haha I've never heard that either. 'Massage therapist' is the best term I think.
tyingq 7y ago
Goalies didn't use to wear masks. Terry Sawchuck's face: https://images.app.goo.gl/noYBCaJAYkVWKLeG9 https://images.app.goo.gl/noYBCaJAYkVWKLeG9
- ralfd 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/historyinpics/status/786272014927626240 https://twitter.com/historyinpics/status/786272014927626240
emmelaich 7y ago
Coincidence - I'm watching Slap Shot right now. I'm amazed that only the goalie wore head gear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_Shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_Shot
- WalterBright 7y ago
  I suspect they didn't because the players need to be recognizable to the film goers. It's the same thing with movies about military pilots - they are filmed with the oxygen mask off. (Top Gun helpfully had the name of the pilot stenciled on the front of the helmet! Sort of like why knights had a coat of arms so you could tell who was who and not hack off the limb of your buddy.)
  - emmelaich 7y ago
    Good point. I looked it up. Slap Shot is from 1977. Helmets weren't compulsory in the NHL still 79/80. And that only for new players. Most were wearing them by 78, in the NHL. Slap Shot is about a minor league, so probably a lot fewer wore helmets. Apparently some were still playing without helmets in 1996/97 !
- jgon 7y ago
  What's truly unbelievable is that even the goalie used to not wear any headgear, as any good Canadian can tell you having watched one of our Canadian Heritage Moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcolbkAAgag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcolbkAAgag

173 points by evo_9 7y ago

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.

nsxwolf 7y ago
"I picked that one up and washed it off and stuck it back in; it seems to have re-rooted." I am shuddering. This is Cronenberg levels of body horror. I suppose I must have known this was how it worked, but I figured there was more to it than that and that dentists had to do something more dentist-y to make it take.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  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.
  - badger_bravo 7y ago
    Would it still take root if it was placed in backwards? If it was someone else's tooth? a particularly well shaped rock?
    - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
      It depends, but there's an issue of biocompatibility similar to any organ transplant. So no, a rock wouldn't work. The backwards tooth though is interesting - my guess is if it would fit it would stick (although it would definitely fuck up your bite). https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transplants/ https://myhillsdentist.com/blog/why-dont-we-do-tooth-transpl...
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if a backwards tooth could remain viable. This is the sort of error that would be noticed immediately by any conscious patient, however. A backwards tooth would mess up occlusion. Few people would ignore the fact that they can't close their mouth completely.
- 7y ago

psychometry 7y ago

Last I checked, college and professional women's leagues mandated face protection. Why don't men's?

bsznjyewgd 7y ago
Not only that, but the NHL BANS full face protection unless you're recovering from an injury. (Ex-all star Dany Heatley spent most of his career wearing a comically big half-visor after suffering a serious eye injury, I wonder if he would've opted for a full visor if given the choice.) Some players already dislike the currently mandated half-visors (visors can distort vision, or fog up, etc.) and do weird shenanigans like having small or tipped-up visors. There's also a fighting culture in North American professional hockey which would be destroyed by mandatory full face protection.
- krisgee 7y ago
  >There's also a fighting culture in North American professional hockey which would be destroyed by mandatory full face protection. Having grown up playing hockey in a pretty rough league that's not true. You just hook your hand under the back of the helmet and pull, it'll pop right off.
  - rhcom2 7y ago
    There was a recent rule change that bans players from removing their own helmet (but not their opponent's) before a fight and the threat of punching hard plastic doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    With a full cage? Either the wearer has deliberately made that possible, or it'll hurt. I was kept mine so that I could get it on and off without unclipping the cage, but as snug as possible while still allowing that. So pulling it off isn't quick, and I wouldn't fancy someone else doing it.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  The “fighting culture” in the NHL (perhaps more in the AhL and college leagues?) can’t die soon enough. It’s already better than it used to be in the 80s and 90s but there is some way to go. A good first step would be actual match penalties for proper fights. It has worked elsewhere.

THansenite 7y ago

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.

u10 7y ago
Nobody is making the Show from beer league, better to keep a full mouth of teeth.
roter 7y ago
I too play with a cage in a beer league. I'm used to the more limited visibility. I've seen too many horrors on the ice. The puck has eyes of its own. It still seems to find my unprotected bits.
alkonaut 7y ago
I wonder why the 50/50 ones (visor top with cage underneath) aren’t more popular? Juniors/Women I think are required to wear regular cages but for recreational players you’d think more would wear that type? I got a used pro players helmet from my team for $20 after the season (they sell off all their gear to fans) which is great bargain for a really nice piece of equipment - but I wouldn’t dare playing games with it because it’s a visor obviously. I look like one of the cooler dads at the 4year olds’ skate practice though.
- soperj 7y ago
  Because visors suck? They fog up and if they get wet you have to clean them.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    Visits are basically mandated everywhere now (just the NHL will take 10 more years while everyone else has already made them mandatory) If you are required to wear a visor anyway it feels like the version with a few bars covering the teeth/jaw can’t fog up that much more than just the visor alone?

leblancfg 7y ago

That article is so evocative and well-written, I feel I'll be coming back to it just to steal some expressions.

ydnaclementine 7y ago
Always a casual sports fan, I recently started reading ESPN daily after getting into fantasy football/basketball, and their writers are really good. And they have sport specific RSS feeds https://www.espn.com/espn/news/story?page=rssinfo https://www.espn.com/espn/news/story?page=rssinfo

smacktoward 7y ago

Back in colonial times, a common part of two people getting married was the bride's father paying to have all her teeth pulled and replaced with a set of false teeth -- because the state of dental hygiene was so bad then that it was just assumed that she would lose all her teeth eventually, and that way the husband wouldn't have to bear the expense of dealing with it. It was a kind of dowry. I look at those photos and wonder if something similar wouldn't be a nice benefit for newly minted pro hockey players.

koboll 7y ago
Source? That's an amazing fact
- gwern 7y ago
  I've heard this before, but about England and only as something relatively rare: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/smile-a-perfect-smile-but-dont-laugh-we-have-officially-lost-our-dentures-1336158.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/smile-a-perf...
  - J-dawg 7y ago
    In 'Road to Wigan Pier', George Orwell found that many working class people saw their teeth as an inconvenience to get rid of as soon as possible. > Several dentists have told me that in industrial districts a person over thirty with any of his or her own teeth is coming to be an abnormality. In Wigan various people gave me their opinion that it is best to get shut of your teeth as early in life as possible. 'Teeth is just a misery,' one woman said to me. In one house where I stayed there were, apart from myself, five people, the oldest being forty-three and the youngest a boy of fifteen. Of these the boy was the only one who possessed a single tooth of his own, and his teeth were obviously not going to last long. http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html
    - gwern 7y ago

Vysero 7y ago

Here I am complaining about my recent gum grafting surgery...

kseo3l 7y ago

I always thought that the dentists would have a lot of work, but has someone asked to the massagists? lol

SilasX 7y ago
I was going to correct you, but apparently "massagist" is a standard term; I'd only ever heard masseur(m.)/masseuse(f.). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/massagist https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/massagist
- 40four 7y ago
  Haha I've never heard that either. 'Massage therapist' is the best term I think.

tyingq 7y ago

Goalies didn't use to wear masks. Terry Sawchuck's face: https://images.app.goo.gl/noYBCaJAYkVWKLeG9 https://images.app.goo.gl/noYBCaJAYkVWKLeG9

ralfd 7y ago
https://twitter.com/historyinpics/status/786272014927626240 https://twitter.com/historyinpics/status/786272014927626240

emmelaich 7y ago

Coincidence - I'm watching Slap Shot right now. I'm amazed that only the goalie wore head gear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_Shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_Shot

WalterBright 7y ago
I suspect they didn't because the players need to be recognizable to the film goers. It's the same thing with movies about military pilots - they are filmed with the oxygen mask off. (Top Gun helpfully had the name of the pilot stenciled on the front of the helmet! Sort of like why knights had a coat of arms so you could tell who was who and not hack off the limb of your buddy.)
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Good point. I looked it up. Slap Shot is from 1977. Helmets weren't compulsory in the NHL still 79/80. And that only for new players. Most were wearing them by 78, in the NHL. Slap Shot is about a minor league, so probably a lot fewer wore helmets. Apparently some were still playing without helmets in 1996/97 !
jgon 7y ago
What's truly unbelievable is that even the goalie used to not wear any headgear, as any good Canadian can tell you having watched one of our Canadian Heritage Moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcolbkAAgag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcolbkAAgag