The National Hockey League (NHL), the top professional ice hockey league in the United States and Canada, has an unusual practice: when a player's front tooth breaks during a game, the team dentist can complete a root canal right beside the bench and send him straight back out onto the ice.
According to The Associated Press, at the men's ice hockey gold-medal final at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy last February, Team USA's Jack Hughes took a stick to the mouth from a Canadian player, scattering a tooth and fragments of it across the ice. Hughes kept playing, and scored the game-winning goal in overtime, giving the United States its first men's ice hockey gold medal since 1980. His gap-toothed grin became a viral symbol of how, in this sport, losing a tooth is treated less like a mishap and more like a badge of honor.
Hughes's Treatment History and Other NHL Injury Cases
Someone else recognized Hughes's broken tooth right away. Jason Schepis, team dentist for his New Jersey Devils, was watching the game on television and spotted it immediately. It was the same tooth he had saved with a root canal a few years earlier, after Hughes broke it taking a high stick in the playoffs. "We did the root canals, fixed it up," Schepis recalled. "Those were his teeth."
This kind of thing is nothing unusual in the NHL. In the 2019 playoffs, Joe Pavelski took a puck to the jaw and still scored in that same game, and Keith Yandle lost nine teeth yet played 168 straight games afterward.
A Team Dentist on Call for Every Game
Dedicated Dentists for All 30 Teams at Every Game
All 30 NHL teams have their own dentist, and these specialists accompany the team physicians to every single game, home or away.
Tom Lenz, dentist for the Washington Capitals, said, "You never know till you get back there, so you always have to be ready to just jump in and take care of it." Sometimes it's just a broken tooth; other times it turns into a jaw fracture.
Root Canals and Emergency Care Mid-Game
What these dentists do is different from routine dental care. Schepis described the moment in the 2023 playoffs when Hughes broke a tooth on another stick: "They're snapped in half, the nerves are hanging out, the ice is cold (and) he can't breathe because the nerves are hanging," Schepis said. "Just numb him right at the end of the first, did the root canals right there, pulled the nerves out." In 2024, Schepis examined an injury to Connor Bedard, diagnosed a fractured jaw, and ruled him out of the game. When Alexander Ovechkin lost a front tooth to a stick in 2007, his dentist made him a temporary implant within a day. He later lost that implant and simply made the gap part of his look. He is still playing at age 40, having broken the NHL's all-time goal-scoring record.
Face Shields Are Mandatory, Mouthguards Still Optional
How NHL Players Use Protective Gear
The NHL requires all new players to wear a visor covering the face; only a handful of players who were already in the league before the rule took effect are exempt. Lenz said facial injuries have dropped noticeably since visors became mandatory. Mouthguards, which directly protect the teeth and gums, remain a matter of individual choice.
Brenden Dillon of the Devils started wearing a mouthguard after needing braces three times from hockey injuries as a kid. He went without one in the minors, then started wearing one again after getting hit in his first NHL fight. Researchers have recently been studying ways to make custom mouthguards using an intraoral scanner instead of a physical impression, though some findings show the fit still isn't as good as a hand-made one.
Dental Support for Korea's National Athletes and Domestic Gear Rules
South Korea has no system like the NHL's, with a dentist on call for every team at every game. In April, however, the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee signed an agreement with Minish Dental Hospital to assign a coordinator to national team athletes and set up a system for treating tooth injuries that occur during training or competition. The Korean Academy of Sports Dentistry also supports oral checkups and mouthguard fabrication at the dental clinic in the Jincheon National Training Center. In Korean ice hockey, mouthguards are only recommended and neck guards are the only mandatory piece of equipment, unlike the NHL, which has made even face shields mandatory.