Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
For more than 20 years, Dr. Glenn Edwards was the Blues’ team dentist. He’s seen everything from routine toothaches to an infamous puck to the mouth that both resulted in a goal and led former Blues player Keith Tkachuk to seven root canals. In a sport where many players are missing teeth, Edwards has fixed the smiles of the checkers and the checkees, from Brett Hull to David Backes.
• I was the team dentist for the Blues from ’89 or so through last season. I’m still the team dentist for the St. Louis Rams.
• The most common hockey injury is sticks to the face, with lacerated faces or teeth chipped or broken or knocked out. Punches and pucks to the face are second and third. Often there’s some soft-tissue damage, like a cut lip or a slash in the chin, and the other doctors take a look, too. We do whatever we need to do to get them back on the ice.
• If the injury is minor, there’s a lot we can do with the new bonding materials. We use a mobile dental unit at Scottrade Center, a small chair and compressor with suction that they’ve had for the last two years. If it’s major, it’s a little harder without a full facility. What you really want is all your instruments and materials at your disposal. The main thing you can do is assess the extent of the injury and decide what has to be done right away, or what can wait till after the game or later. There were many times we injected someone with a local anesthetic to make the area numb or smoothed off the rough edges of a chipped tooth.
• Every third or fourth game, I’d have to evaluate somebody who got nailed, but sometimes the job was routine, like helping with toothaches.
• When I first started back in the late ’80s, a lot of players were missing teeth and had busted teeth—the stereotypical hockey-player look. Today, most players get things fixed along the way, and most are lucky they don’t have serious dental injuries. Hull never ended up with a serious injury—he finished with all his own teeth and his own smile.
• Keith Tkachuk was in his last year and had just a couple months to go before retirement when he got hit in the mouth by a puck. It crushed the bone in his face that held the upper teeth in and the nerves died. His injury was probably the most extensive I’ve seen. It was devastating for him and his family. But he recovered. We fixed him up well, and he’s doing well.
• There were a couple players who got hit and the tooth came out in one whole piece. We can often get the tooth back in and get them back in the game pretty quickly, in 20 to 30 minutes. If we can stabilize it, the bone will grow back around the root. You have to treat it with a root canal later, though.
• Most people do not go to work and think they’re gonna get their teeth busted out.
• You might think an enforcer would need more dental work, but typically those guys were pretty good at not taking a pounding in the face or the teeth. I remember Todd Ewen was a crazy fighter and an extremely tough guy. One time he came in the office and I was working on him and I said, “Todd, aren’t you afraid you’re gonna get your teeth bashed in?” He said, “Nah—I’m a pitcher, not a catcher.” The enforcers mainly injure their knuckles and fists; their hands are really banged-up from punching helmets. Their hands take a beating.
• I never witnessed Al MacInnis injuring anyone in the mouth with his slap shot. He injured a few players, but not any of those dentally, that I can recall. I wouldn’t step in front of anyone’s slap shot, but his was scary. He was a very skilled player, and he kept the puck very low, so no mouth injuries, though.
• It is insane that these guys aren’t playing with face cages. Up until you become a professional, if you’re playing in college or high school, you play in a face cage. I think they should be mandatory in the pros, because the injuries are too many and they can be devastating. Players are really tough and they don’t complain. They might lose some teeth or take a puck in the face. But the pros are resistant to wear the face cages. It might be because they find it harder to fight. A lot of face shields stop at the tip of the nose. Maybe the owners want facial recognition. I don’t know.
• Mouth guards are important, but only about 50 percent of the players wear them. Some players just don’t feel they can breathe or talk so well, even with a custom-made, well-fitting mouthpiece.
• I do hear war stories from the other NHL team dentists. There’s an association of team dentists that gets together once a year, usually at the All-Star break, and we talk about different techniques and mouth-guard fabrication.
• I decided to leave the position because it had been 22 years or so, and I had seen enough hockey games. I loved the camaraderie of being around the other team doctors and the interactions with the players, but it was a big time commitment, being on call every home game. I was going to 50-plus home games a year. It was a second job for me because I see patients, too. I have been the team dentist for the Rams since they moved to St. Louis in ’95.
• Some hockey players choose to have removable teeth because their teeth might get damaged on the job, and then they would have to have work done all over again. So some players won’t “wear their teeth” during the game. I’m not talking like a complete denture, but like two or three teeth in a plate in the front. They’ll put the teeth right back in after the game.
• These are young guys with girlfriends, and they don’t want to look toothless. They want to be on ESPN looking good. They don’t want to look like hillbillies.
