Jack Hughes is back on the ice with a new smile, about a month after he broke his teeth leading Team USA men’s hockey to gold at the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics.
After having secured the win against rival Canada on Feb. 22, Hughes returned to his NHL team, the New Jersey Devils, in March. The Devils confirmed with NBC News that Hughes fixed his top teeth on March 17.
Hughes’ shattered smile will be the defining image of Team USA’s victory.
During the third period of the gold medal game, Canada’s Sam Bennett’s high stick hit Hughes in the face, chipping a few of his teeth. With the U.S. and Canada tied at 1 at the end of the third period, they went into sudden-death overtime.
Early in the extra period, Zach Werenski passed the puck to Hughes, who took a second before he fired a slap shot past Canada’s Jordan Binnington for the golden goal. It secured Team USA’s first hockey title since 1980.
Hughes’ mother, Ellen, told NBC’s “TODAY” show that she was glad it was just his teeth and no other injuries.
“I’m so happy he wears a mouth guard,” she said. “I can’t even imagine how many more teeth he would have lost without a mouth guard.”
Dr. Jason Auerbach, whose practice, Riverside Oral Surgery, is the official oral surgeon of the New Jersey Devils, said that custom-made, custom-fit mouth guards protect the teeth in several ways but that not everything is protected.
“If you take a slap shot to the face, the velocity of the puck is so great,” Auerbach said. “The energy, therefore, is so great that even though it’s protected — and it does protect to some degree — there will be some injury.”
Auerbach, who was not Hughes’ dentist for the procedure to repair his teeth, said it looked as if most of Hughes’ injuries were dental and did not require surgery.
As part of his post-Olympics media tour, Hughes appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Hughes told Fallon that he didn’t want to spend time in the dentist’s chair.
Fallon asked whether the chipped tooth was going to be Hughes’ thing. “I can promise you, this won’t be my thing,” Hughes said.
Hughes is finishing the season with the Devils, for whom he has scored 21 points since his Olympic run. He joined New Jersey as the No. 1 pick for the 2019 NHL draft and is in year four of an eight-year, $64 million contract.
Auerbach said: "I feel a ton of pride. I felt a ton of pride for the USA, for him in particular. He’s a New Jersey Devil. I live and brought my family up in New Jersey. Yeah, it was a ton of personal pride.”
