![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-1437515752-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n Miles Wood shows off his smile in 2022, when he was with the Devils. (Bruce Bennett \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a badge of honor sometimes to have been through the fight out there and lost a tooth or chipped a tooth,\u201d Bruins team dentist Dr. Edwin Riley says. \u201cJust a different mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown required two procedures following his run-in with Fehervary. First, the little that was left of his tooth had to come out. Then he had a metal post put in to serve as the base of a future full-time replacement.<\/p>\n
That, however, will wait until he retires. The risk is not worth the reward.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it happens again and you have the fake one in over the post and it breaks the post, the post can actually break the bone. That could be a major surgery,\u201d Brown says. \u201cYou try not to get that. Guys will get little pieces of the teeth fixed. But if you\u2019re getting a whole new one stuck up there, it can break the base if you get another injury to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A player could roll the dice that the odds are low of having the same area smashed multiple times. But the severity of such an outcome goes hand in hand with the likelihood of teeth being exposed to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccidents where people fall off bikes or people trip, fall and hit the ground, those are all similar kinds of injuries where you\u2019re going to see lacerations to the lip and to the soft tissue around the teeth, fractured teeth, teeth that could get pushed,\u201d Riley says. \u201cIt\u2019s usually just that in hockey, the exposure to the potential for that is much higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
A dental bridge is a more permanent alternative to a flipper. But players may prefer to wait for this procedure until they retire because of the risk of a repeat strike. Not only that, a bridge also puts the neighbors of the original injured tooth at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say you lose one tooth,\u201d says Dr. Dennis Fasbinder, clinical professor and director of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry\u2019s Dental Faculty Associates. \u201cThe player decides, \u2018I want a bridge. I don\u2019t want to have an implant done.\u2019 Well, we have to put a crown on the teeth on either side of that space. So it looks like the tooth is replaced. But now three teeth are connected. If they get hit there again, they might lose additional teeth now, not just the one they lost to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dentists prefer prevention over intervention. Wearing a mouth guard would reduce the likelihood of injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost trauma occurs not because the tooth itself gets hit. That is obviously one option,\u201d Fasbinder says. \u201cBut a lot of times, it happens by hitting the chin and slamming the teeth together, so it\u2019s a tooth-to-tooth contact. Any kind of custom mouth guard of a couple millimeters is going to protect those teeth from hitting each other. That cuts down a tremendous amount of trauma right there. It also shields the front of the teeth. So if you start out with a hockey stick or puck, it will diffuse the force on those teeth and protect them from being chipped or broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
But mouth guards are not mandatory in the NHL. Most times, when a player hits the ice, he\u2019s playing with fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rapid response<\/p>\n
Dentists like Riley attend their teams\u2019 home games \u2014 they are responsible for visiting players as well \u2014 to be on hand when things go sideways. Care is usually not out of the ordinary. According to Fasbinder, dentists learn how to assess and treat such facial trauma (lacerations to the lips, cuts in the soft tissue around the teeth, fractures to the teeth) in pediatric dentistry, oral surgery and endodontics courses. The job starts with triage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere the teeth fractured? Were the teeth moved out of position?\u201d Riley asks. \u201cIf it\u2019s something we can address immediately, whether it be a repositioned tooth, we have a dental kit and some equipment on site where we can try to splint or help reposition the tooth, or cover up the tooth if there\u2019s an exposed nerve or pulp. And usually if there are soft-tissue lacerations, usually with the medical team sutures can be done and try to stabilize the patient that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It can be a challenging process. The player is in discomfort. The injury has occurred during a shift. Adrenaline and heart rate are high. In some cases, the medical staff has to assess whether a concussion has occurred at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re in the middle of an acute injury,\u201d Riley says. \u201cYou\u2019re battling the player maybe not really wanting to be there, wanting to get out right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
If a tooth comes out entirely, its prompt recovery makes saving it more likely. According to Fasbinder, emergency technicians sometimes carry bottles for displaced teeth containing a solution that mimics saliva\u2019s slight acidity. Milk can also be used.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very time-dependent success or failure mechanism,\u201d Fasbinder says. \u201cThe longer the tooth is out of the mouth, the less success you\u2019re going to have that the tooth is going to be able to be replanted and become a part of the dentition again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The best-case scenario, if you can call it that, is a fractured tooth. An on-site dentist\u2019s priority is to determine that it is not loosened to the bone. If that is the case, Fasbinder says the dentist can treat the player\u2019s pain with a local anesthetic at the base of the tooth. The player can then return to the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The time Fehervary elbowed his tooth from his mouth, Brown didn\u2019t recall the pain being severe. Perhaps it was because he knew his tooth was beyond saving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all crumbled up in my mouth,\u201d Brown says. \u201cSo I just gave what I had to my trainer, Tommy (Alva). Didn\u2019t miss a shift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Brown is quick with a smile. As such, it does not take long to see that Brown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4830,1785,385,99],"class_list":["post-287349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-boston-bruins","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}