Jack Hughes injury reminds me of horrific childhood dental trauma

No guts, no glory. There were plenty of guts as the U.S. men’s hockey team brought home the gold in the Winter Olympics.

Read More: Jack Hughes gets the ultimate NJ honor — his own deli sandwich

Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils was at the center of it all.

After taking a vicious high stick to the mouth, he went in to score the game-winning goal with his mouth full of blood and broken teeth. The iconic photo of him smiling with his front teeth broken out of his mouth will live on for generations.

Hughes’ ordeal reminded me of two horrible dental injuries I saw when I was a kid. They weren’t sports-related, and they didn’t happen to me but to two different friends.

One friend in 6th grade had a horrible thing done to him.

It was Halloween, and we were all allowed to wear our costumes to school. A big deal because it would probably be the last time we would still be dressing up for Halloween.

My friend went as a scarecrow. It was a homemade costume where he had a broomstick through the sleeves of the shirt he wore, while his actual arms were tucked inside. A cool costume, but awkward, and he had no use of his arms.

He was at the top of the stairwell when another kid, a known jerk, seeing that he had no arms to break his fall, purposely pushed him headfirst down the stairs. Unable to put his arms out, his mouth hit perfectly on the edge of those unforgiving, very hard steps.

I seem to remember they were made of poured concrete. It instantly broke his upper four middle teeth right in half. The two central incisors (the two front teeth) and the two lateral incisors on either side. The upper parts of the teeth remained in his mouth, but all four teeth were broken in half with exposed nerve endings, and I cannot imagine the agony he must have felt. And you cannot imagine the blood.

The other story involved a wagon and a flagpole.

My friend and I lived on a street with a middle school. Its driveway angled down into a cul-de-sac where kids would get dropped off at the main doors, and in the middle of that big circle was a flagpole ringed by a concrete berm.

We were hanging out with several other neighborhood kids, and my friend had that classic red wagon we were horsing around with. You know how you could sit inside one of those wagons and pull the handle all the way towards you and kind of use it to steer?

He bet us that he could get inside that wagon and race down the driveway at top speed and cut away at the last second, and miss the flagpole. Of course, we dared, and double-dog and triple-dog dared him just because we wanted to see it.

He climbed inside the wagon and pulled that handle in to steer. He kicked along to start a fast roll, and as gravity and the angle took over, he went faster still.

You already know what happened. The last second came, and he turned that handle, but the wagon didn’t respond nimbly. Instead, it hit that concrete berm and launched him headfirst out of the wagon and face-first into the flagpole. We all gasped.

He stood from the wreckage. There was blood everywhere. 9 of his teeth were knocked completely out. As we ran to him, we could see some shattered teeth on the ground, and others he was spitting out of his gaping mouth along with many ounces of blood.

“My mom is gonna kill me! My MOM is gonna KILL me!” is all he could think about.

Of course, both kids got medical attention, and dentistry made them whole again. But they didn’t get any gold medal like Jack Hughes!