Got Teeth?

By Theresa Sanders

You're not really a hockey player until you've lost a few teeth.
~Bill Gadsby

"Brrrr," I said to my husband Jeff as we hurried toward the Scottrade Center, home of all our Stanley Cup dreams. Despite chill-to-the-bone temperatures and winds that chafed on contact, we couldn't wait to watch our beloved St. Louis Blues play. Finally inside, we went our separate ways, but not before Jeff offered me a winning smile.

"See you after practice," he said. "If I get a puck, I'll give it to one of the kids. Always kids down by the ice, you know."

"I do know," I answered, smiling back.

Now I really wasn't patronizing him. It's just that we had this conversation every game, about pucks and practice and kids down by the ice. Still, I loved that hockey gave him such joy. He especially liked the pre-game drills, and we always arrived a good thirty minutes early so he could observe rink-side before joining me in our upper-bowl seats. As I settled in upstairs, I caught sight of Jeff below. I could well envision the twinkle in his eye as he watched the team rehearse their dekes and slap shots. There was an ease to him now that hadn't been present an hour before, when he was fraught with worry over his stressful job. Hockey was already working its magic.

We were truly a hooked-on-hockey family. While none of us had ever played the sport, we had held Blues season tickets for many years. We'd been fans since the Brett Hull era, fallen in love with Kelly Chase, and counted our lucky stars when we were blessed with a half-season of Wayne Gretzky. There was something about hockey that even I found enticing. Though not a fan by any means before I married my sports-crazy husband, I now couldn't wait to attend a game. I loved the international feel of it all, of hearing two national anthems sung when the Blues played a Canadian team. I loved pee-wee hockey at period break, the shimmer of the ice, the thwack of the puck against glass and how our whole arena of impassioned fans broke into a silly power-play dance when the opposing team committed a penalty. But there was one small thing that had always given me pause: some of the players' startling lack of teeth.

"It's kind of a badge of honor, Mom," remarked my older son one day in his penalty-for-roughing voice. "Those guys are thinking about scoring goals, not about losing their teeth."

"It's part of the game," concurred my younger son, though with slightly more sympathy than his brother. "But I can see how those missing teeth might bother you, Mom."

Bother, indeed.

As someone who'd been involved in a long-ago car accident that had resulted in enough dental work and jaw surgery to put me in the maxillofacial Hall of Fame, I guess you could say I was obsessed with teeth. I loved a full, beautiful set of them, and the hockey moves that proved detrimental to those pearly whites — elbowing, boarding, high-sticking, to name a few — made me a wee bit squeamish. "I don't reward bad behavior," I often told my boys during particularly vile fights on the ice, when everyone else was cheering wildly and I would sit waiting for the referees to intervene. I was a mom, after all, and I didn't think fighting set a good example.

Not that my boys shared my sentiment. No, they just indulged me, all the while shouting things like: "Hit 'em again!" "What? They started it!" "Five-Minute Major? No way!"

Not that my favorite usher, Christine, echoed my sentiment either. "There's no whining in hockey, baby," she told me the night we first spoke. "I see you here every game, all bundled up, not complaining about the cold. Shoot, that's the sign of a good fan. That's what we do."

Not that my older son's favorite player, Keith "Big Walt" Tkachuk, could relate to my squeamishness whatsoever, yet he was living proof that my worries at least had merit. One of our team's most celebrated stars, Tkachuk was a tough-it-out forward who had recently retired, though not before suffering serious facial injuries in his last year, the result of a flying puck that cost him five teeth and infinite trips to the dentist. Ever the professional, he'd scored a goal for his efforts on that play, but as I later watched highlights on the news, I couldn't help feeling his pain. Certainly, I knew what he faced. There would be root canals and implants, bite problems and chewing difficulties, not to mention significant jaw involvement. I hated that he would be ending his fine career minus his five front teeth.

Surprisingly, however, it was Big Walt's injury that made me realize why I loved hockey so much. The understanding came during a game when the Blues were honoring Tkachuk for his recent Hall of Fame induction. From out on the ice, he waved to the crowd, and as Jeff and I saw him on the Jumbotron, Jeff turned to me and said, "Hey look, hon. Walt's got teeth again!"

"Oh my gosh," I replied, doing a quick double take. "He does!"


Big Walt was, in fact, sporting his new pearly whites, but I hadn't even noticed! It dawned on me then that maybe what I had focused on all these many months when I'd seen him on the news or featured at games wasn't his lack of teeth, after all. Maybe what had caught my attention was how his blue eyes sparkled with love for his sport, how his dedication and can-do attitude seemed to touch every fan. Sure, his toothless grin had been on display for all the world to see, but it was his larger-than-life smile that had captured our hearts.

"Brrrr," I said to Jeff as we left the arena, wind whipping through our coats at every turn. Finally inside our car, we cranked on the heat, our conversation still peppered with hockey. There had been some awesome moments, some thrills and spills, and end-to-end action that had delighted. There had been laughter and high-fives, Christine's warm hug, and the playfulness of her fellow usher, Ophelia, as she delivered her usual fist-bump hello. Somehow, it never seemed to matter who I was, what I did, or what kind of day I'd had. When I entered that arena at game time, it felt like coming home.

Which I think, in the end, is what hockey does for us; it makes fans feel like family. I'm grateful for the experience of that, and to be able to share that experience with my husband and sons. I'm grateful for our boys on the ice, who not only make the whole experience possible, but who give us their all, every game, every night, for their camaraderie and sportsmanship, and okay, even for their occasional "bad behavior" — with or without teeth!

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