On Guard for Teeth

The term “hockey teeth” seems like an oxymoron — the gappy grins of so many players say a mouthful about how rough our favourite game can get. Since April is Oral Health Month, we’re looking at the legacy of the “Father of the Mouthguard,” Arthur Wood, a dentist and hockey coach from Mississauga, Ontario, who was treating so many game-related broken teeth that he decided to do something about it.

Mouthguards had been standard equipment in boxing since the 1920s, but there was no such device for hockey. So in 1952, Wood joined forces with his engineer neighbour Charles Patterson and created the “mug guard” — an oval-shaped wire cage that went over a player’s mouth and was strapped to the helmet.

The design evolved for more comfort, and within a few years the reduction in broken teeth was so remarkable that in 1961 the Mississauga Hockey League made mug guards mandatory for all players. The device’s popularity spread across Canada and into the United States.

Wood continued his work improving the safety of hockey equipment by helping to invent proper helmets in the 1970s. Although the resulting full-facemask design meant the extinction of the mug guard, the Museum of Health Care at Kingston in Ontario has preserved some of the original devices. In the 1980s Wood and other dentists started creating custom-fitted guards to be worn inside the mouth — devices that are used to this day.

Wood never patented his original mug guard, but his lifetime of community work earned him membership in the Order of Canada. Now that’s a reason to smile.