Team USA will forever see Jack Hughes as an Olympic hero. On Sunday, the New Jersey Devils‘ star center, who was born in Orlando but came to prominence as a young hockey player in Michigan, scored the game-winning goal in overtime against Canada to give the USA men their first gold medal in almost half a century.

Hughes will, of course, have another big reason to remember this moment: He lost his teeth in the middle of the epic hockey game. The gap in Hughes’ teeth was hard not to notice as he skated around the ice after the win and during his postgame interview with NBC.

It’s not at all uncommon for hockey players to lose their teeth in the middle of a high-speed physical game where sticks and high-speed pucks are all flying around. But how did it happen for Hughes here?

It likely happened when Hughes took a high stick from Canada’s Sam Bennett (who plays for the Florida Panthers) late in the third period. It resulted in a double minor penalty for the Canadians, who had to spend most of the very end of the game on the penalty kill after giving the USA relentless offensive pressure beforehand. In all honesty, the penalty itself might have been one of the biggest reasons the USA was able to survive and eventually win in overtime:

Sam Bennett’s high stick that led to Jack Hughes losing a tooth. #CANUSApic.twitter.com/RoBlFcfrO1

— Andrew Jerell Jones, Luke 1:37 (BlueSky too now) (@sluggahjells) February 22, 2026

Hughes will officially remember Sunday as the day he brought a men’s gold medal back to the USA and lost some of his teeth at the same time.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: How Jack Hughes lost his teeth in USA vs. Canada gold medal game

​https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/did-jack-hughes-lose-teeth-163223784.html