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Wild Pain is intense and damage is extensive, but in hockey, ‘If you lose teeth, you can still play’ Most Wild players have spit bloody enamel on the ice after taking pucks or sticks to the face; then, they live with crooked smiles. By Sarah McLellan The Minnesota Star Tribune November 8, 2025 at 1:07PM Wild center Joel Eriksson Ek pays the price for his physical play. This what he looked like at his postseason press conference after the 2022 season. (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune) ADVERTISEMENT “There’s going to be stitches, and, yeah, we got good dental insurance, so we’ll fix that up when you’re done playing.” Down but not out Eriksson Ek is a magnet for clips and collisions because of his hard-nosed style. This wasn’t even the first time his top teeth were hit: They were previously damaged by the stick of then-teammate Dmitry Kulikov during the 2022 playoffs vs. St. Louis. Related Coverage Another teammate caught him last month, with rookie defenseman Zeev Buium’s stick coming up as Buium battled with the Flyers’ Matvei Michkov. “I didn’t even know,” Buium said. “I felt so bad.” The bridge Eriksson Ek wore broke, one tooth was knocked out and two more were fractured. But refilling Eriksson Ek’s mouth wasn’t top of mind when he exited the ice in Philadelphia; his brief absence was typical. Jake Middleton’s well-known gap is the byproduct of two incidents, with two of his front teeth getting dislodged when he went sliding into the boards in the minors during the pandemic-shortened season — an impact that also broke his eyebrow bone and nose and shattered his jaw. The Wild defenseman’s other two front teeth were casualties from Middleton getting hit from behind and connecting with the dasher along the boards. Wild defenseman Jake Middleton, like many NHL players, will wait until his career ends for final work to repair his teeth. (Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune) “It kind of felt like a rite of passage but then when it happened, it’s the worst and you wished it never got to that point,” said Middleton, who doesn’t even like getting his teeth cleaned because of how many hours he has spent in the dentist chair. Middleton finished his shift, playing another 25 to 30 seconds despite his mouth pooling with blood. After getting numbed, Middleton came back with a bubble on his helmet but soon removed it since it kept fogging up. This early in his pro career, “which is also why I stayed in,” Middleton said. “I was still trying to keep a job.” Forget about anesthetics; helmets weren’t even mandatory when Tom Reid suited up for the Blackhawks, then the North Stars, from 1967 to ’78. A deflected puck slammed into Reid’s face during one game, cracking a tooth in half and leaving the nerve exposed. Reid used gum to protect it from the cold air. After the game, Reid went to have the tooth extracted before the team left for New York. “Every time the doctor would put the pliers in my mouth, the nerve would hit the pliers and that would make me jump,” recalled Reid, who is in his 24th season as the Wild’s radio analyst. “He kept telling me to lay still. I said, ‘I’m trying. Believe me.’ ” Ultimately, Reid went to another doctor to get the tooth out. He still made it to the airport in time to travel with the team. “You’re going to play hockey,” Reid said, “you’re going to lose some teeth.” Bridging the gap Reid isn’t exactly sure how many teeth hockey took from him. “Could be seven, eight,” he guessed, with a handful flying out when Reid’s defensive partner Lou Nanne went to crosscheck an opposing player, who ducked to defer the destruction to Reid. “I think he put his face in the way just because he needed better-looking teeth,” joked Nanne, the former North Stars coach and general manager. Once Reid’s career ended, he had a full reconstruction done on his mouth. But while he was still playing, Reid had a bridge put in, and that’s a go-to for players. “It’s porcelain,” Pelke said. “It’s aesthetic. It’s functional, and you can always do a dental implant later. So, it’s a nice thing they don’t have to take it in and out.” Pelke made a new bridge for Eriksson Ek, and the teeth fragments that were collected from the ice in Philadelphia assisted in the reconfiguration.
