Why Dallas Stars Rookie Oskar Bäck Is Wearing Braces in the NHL
When Oskar Bäck scored his first NHL against Boston the other night, something probably stuck out to a lot of fans when they saw Bäck’s smile.
Bäck wears braces on his teeth, which is quite uncommon for NHLers, given the amount of contact and potential face injuries that can happen. In fact, my first inline hockey coach, Brian, introduced me to the term “hockey smile” to describe someone with missing teeth. It’s common for hockey players to get teeth knocked out by sticks, pucks, and everything else you can imagine, and even moreso in the NHL, where nobody wears full face protection unless they’re recovering from an injury.
Stars fans of old could just ask Jason Dickinson about how frequently face injuries can occur. Or, more recently, you could point to Mason Marchment, who is already sporting a number of stitches from a puck he took up high against Winnipeg–though he went on to earn Second Star of the Week honors from the NHL, so it didn’t exactly slow him down.
So then, it’s been a bit surprising to see an NHL player like Oskar Bäck sporting what looks like cosmetic dentistry. But as it turns out, the braces aren’t merely cosmetic. In fact, the braces are a sign of just how much Bäck has battled through on his path to the NHL.
On March 17 last spring, while playing for the Texas Stars against the Tucon Roadrunners, Bäck had already assisted on Matěj Blümel goal. But everything changed when he took a late hit from Tucson defenseman Patrik Koch* after shooting the puck. The hit broke Bäck’s jaw, and he ended up missing the rest of the regular season and getting a plate inserted to help with the healing process.
To give you an idea of how severe the injury was, you’ll often hear about players getting their jaw “wired shut” after an injury, like Connor Bedard did last season. But plate insertion is even more invasive, alebit necessary for particularly severe injuries like Bäck’s. Screws and plates enable surgeons to anchor the jawbone in place, all in order to reconstruct the precise angles of the mandible while also suturing the gums back together so they can grown back into place as well. In other words, it’s a pretty significant operation. (Sorry if you’re reading this over lunch.)
But despite the severity of the injury, Bäck returned less than five weeks later to join Texas on their playoff push. Bäck wore a full plastic face-guard, or “fishbowl” during the playoff run, playing in all seven of Texas’ playoff games last spring. And he wasn’t just there for moral support, as Bäck scored two goals and three assists in his team’s run to the second round of the playoffs.
Bäck didn’t have braces at that time, as you can see from his exit interview in May. Bäck got the orthodontia work done early in the summer, but not as a cosmetic choice. Because, while his jawbone was healing, there were some finer details that still needed some additional reconstruction.
“I couldn’t chew my food,” said Bäck on Monday morning when I asked him about it. “My teeth didn’t align at all.” The braces were then put on as a way to help his teeth line up after his jawbone had finally set back in place.
The plan, according to Bäck, was nine to twelve months for the braces to completely realign his teeth, which would take him to March or April on the short end of that range. But even just a few months in, things are already (literally and figuratively) in a much better place. He’s able to chew his food now, although he can still feel that his bite is “not perfect,” with some gaps here and there.
If a stick or a puck gets him in the teeth, then his braces could get bent and have to be removed, of course. But everything Bäck went through to put the rest of his face back together, that’s not a huge concern.
“I was thinking all summer about taking them out for the season,” said Bäck. But in the end, he decided to keep going with the braces for now. He said that if something like a high stick hits him in the mouth, he’ll probably have to consider taking the braces back off at that point, but “we’ll see where it goes,” he said with a shrug.
As Bäck prepares to play in his 12th NHL game against Anaheim on Monday night, it appears to be going quite well indeed.
*Credit to Stephen Meserve of the excellent 100degreehockey.com for tracking down Koch’s name for this piece.