Whaler’s Mouthpiece : Dentist Is Pulling for NHL to Cut Injuries by Protecting Players

With helmets, face masks and mouthpieces, hockey dentistry just isn’t what it used to be.

Take, for example, toothless grins.

“You don’t see that as much anymore as you used to,” said Dr. Edward O’Connell, the Hartford Whaler’s team dentist since 1974. “Things are on the upswing as far as dental health in hockey goes...dental problems are on the decline.”

Although fewer teeth are being scattered about the boards, O’Connell said, hockey players still are prone to mouth injury.

“Most of the injuries you get today are coming from the sticks,” he said. “You very seldom see anybody get a puck in the mouth anymore. These guys, if they see a puck coming, get out of the way.”

Instead, the injuries occur when the play moves into a confined area, such as the corners.

“Someone gets the butt-end of a stick, or sometimes an elbow,” O’Connell said. “That’s how they smash teeth.”

The Whalers spent about $5,000 during the 1983-84 season on dental repair work caused by on-ice activity, according to the 64-year-old dentist who is on call at all home games and has missed only one game in 10 years.

“Most of it is just suturing or an extraction here or there,” he said. “The thing you see most is lacerations in or around the mouth, the gums, the tongue or the lips.”

All of the Whalers wear a mouthpiece when they play, he said. But O’Connell would prefer them to use a “football-type” mouthpiece made of hard rubber because it has less give than the lightweight, pliable, clear-plastic piece they prefer.

“But these guys complain that it (the rubber mouthpiece) makes it too hard to breathe and there’s too much in their mouth and that kind of stuff,” he said.

When he examined the players at the Whalers’ training camp this season, O’Connell said, he had never seen a hockey team with such good teeth. A few years ago, when the Soviet team visited Hartford for an exhibition game, it was a different story.

“The worst teeth I’ve ever seen was when we played the Russian team here,” O’Connell said. “I never saw such awful teeth in all my life.”

O’Connell said he received a telephone call from two interpreters, asking if he would work on one of the Soviet players.

“The poor guy couldn’t speak English,” O’Connell recalled. “He didn’t know if I was going to kill him or what.”