What's with hockey players always missing teeth?

checks into the boards, fighting, sticks to the face, crashing into the ice, etc… these guys are extremely underpaid compared to baseball players, where the worst thing that can happen is to strech a shoulder muscle.

There used to be a time when they weren’t required to wear helmets, so their teeth were right in the line of fire for flying pucks and renegade sticks… not to mention the occasional thrown fist. The older players are mostly the ones with more lost teeth because they were around before the helmet rule.

am I conjuring this? I have very vivid and weird dreams, sometimes. LOL

Haven’t you ever seen just how fast a hard puck travels. If you ask me, it’s amazing that any off these players have any teeth at all.
When the last pro hockey player to play without a helmet announced his retirement he said, “I no play hockey never more.”

If someone hit ME in the head with a high-speed hockey puck, I would have announced my retirement by saying, “Fasldf dgiwe eiackde sjsiuks.”

I’d put money on it being because of the ice! It’s the only way to explain why the Irish hurling players don’t have the same thing going on…..at least, I haven’t noticed that they do.

My friend plays field hockey and has a chipped front tooth. He got a stick to the face at high speed. (Remember that field hockey has no helmets and yet is probably similarly dangerous.)

Bad dental insurance?

I remember an interview with a pro hockey player (I think it was Theo Fleury of the Calgary Flames) who was missing his front two teeth.

He said that he was sick of getting them knocked out with pucks and sticks and was waiting until he retired until he had them replaced.