Last month, Sharks center Logan Couture took a puck speeding at 90 mph directly to the face. His tooth and palate injury was so severe that it occasionally still hurts him to breathe. Check out the cringe-worthy scene below.
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As of right now, his bottom teeth are being held together with wires. The top teeth have a plastic bond coating that keeps them from moving or falling out, according to the Mercury News.
Donald Goudy, a member of the Sharks’ dental team, compared Couture’s injury to those he sees when a car accident victim’s face hits the steering wheel or a mountain biker loses control and flips over the handlebars.
Via Mercury News,
After leaving the rink in Nashville, he was taken to Vanderbilt Hospital. There, doctors manually maneuvered his palate and lower mouth back into a normal shape before using arch bars and all of that wiring and plastic to (A) make sure the palate didn’t collapse again and (B) keep the teeth inside the gums to see if they could survive. After a few days, he could finally chew solid food very slowly with his rear molars, taking up to 40 minutes per meal.
Couture shared a photo of the dental nightmare in which seven or eight teeth will likely be pulled.
Last spring’s post season leading scorer will take the ice for the first time in a month Wednesday against Vancouver. He is wearing a protective cage mask that pee wee hockey players rock. Probably a smart call.
Whoever says hockey players aren’t the toughest athletes on the planet have a screw loose. Here’s a picture of Couture’s ankle after he suffered a fractured fibula at the ankle on Oct. 15, 2015 that required surgery and six screws placed in his ankle.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGqd8iHPiOO/?taken-by=loganc89&hl=en
[h/t Mercury News]