Clifton Park Orthodontics Guarding Shen Hockey Players

This post originally appeared in the The Saratogian on November 20, 2018. Written by Follow Stan Hudy and Stan Hudy.

Sports are often steeped in tradition and during the winter, hockey posters, program covers and social media are often filled with photos of smiling hockey players with missing teeth, proud of their toughness and missing front teeth.

That is one tradition that the Shenendehowa ice hockey team has avoided that with style and ease the past four years courtesy of Dr. Sergey Berenshteyn, D.D. S. and his Clifton Park Orthodontics office. The local office once again provided 28 molded mouth guards for the varsity squad at no cost to the team or the parents.

“We’ve always offered mouth guards, that’s just part of something that we do, but usually it’s by request,” Dr. Sergey Berenshteyn said. “One of the things is that we treat a lot of Shen kids, they’re really into sports and they are very active. It just turned out that someone said to me ‘Hey, would you be interested in doing mouth guards for the team?’ I said absolutely.

“We just had a lot of hockey players in because parents are allowed to stand on the side. They would always talk about upcoming games. It was just cool to be involved in that, so we started bringing the kids in and making mouth guards for the entire team.”

Dr. Berenshteyn and his Adirondack Orthodontics group, with three locations in the Capital District, believed in the need for protection and absorbed the near $10,000 for each season to benefit the Shen Hockey program.

“It was just an easy decision for us because they are all great kids, we love having them in the practice,” Dr. Berenshteyn said. “Many of them are not our patients even; they just come from Shen from the teams.

“It’s nice to meet the entire team and be able to talk to the patients that I see to some of their other friends who are around the team and just to get a whole picture and see all the parents.”

Mouth guards are readily available at retail locations for approximately $20, but require the athlete to either boil the plastic piece to make it more pliable or utilize a gel layer that that they bite into to form to their mouth.

“They have to be a certain fitness to be protective in quality, they have to be at least 4 mm in thickness and that is what these are for hockey,” Dr. Berenshteyn said. “The nice thing about them is the ones you buy over the counter when you mold them, outside the inherent risks; they are still not as precise.”

Another advantage is that unlike a hockey player’s stick, these will last a full season.

“When you boil your own it sits there in ice and it’s not terrible, but these you actually have to pull them out because they fit so well,” junior defenseman Christopher Lasher said. “I’ve been hit a lot over the past years and I haven’t lost any teeth, so I guess its working.”

Lasher was fit last week as part of his third consecutive season with Shen Hockey and he can credit the protective mold for keeping his smile completely intact.

“The reason teeth are lost is you get point impact trauma, the force is attributed to the tooth, the ligaments break, the tooth pops out,” Dr. Berenshteyn said. “The way the mouth guards in a sense, it splints the teeth.

“Because our mouth guards are so tight, they splint them really well, when you get a point of contact the force is evenly dissipated over the mouth guard and over the teeth, they all absorb it together as a segment so you are less likely to lose teeth.”

Last week, three players at a time we welcomed into an expansive exam room where they were greeted by their respective technicians. The pink molding compound was mixed in and then placed onto a one-time use upper mold and placed into the mouth of each player. The mold was held in place by the technician until the compound took a solid impression and then removed. The players were then free to rinse out their mouths of any remaining mixture.

This was the first-ever fitting for new Shenendehowa sophomore forward Jack Christian.

This is my first time getting one, so I thought it was kind of cool getting one.

“I expected it to taste worse,” Jack Christian said. “It’s not difficult in any way, really simple, really quick.”

He is looking forward to maintaining a single mouth guard for the entire season.

“The ones off the shelf, I lose them all the time,” Christian said. “They would fall out a lot, just randomly. “Sometimes they would cut your mouth, get frayed and start cutting your lips and that was not pleasant.”

Dr. Berenshteyn said his office supports a variety of sports and events at Shenendehowa, including the cheerleading squad and the Shen rowing team. His office just finished its consultations for the ‘Smiles Change Lives’ program, donating 25 free orthodontic treatments for people in need.

“They do all the financial screenings, to see if they qualify based on financial need, then we did the clinical screening to make sure they are good candidates for orthodontic treatment,” Dr. Berenshteyn said. “We’re actually in the process of getting started.”

The completed guards will be delivered to the team and the Plainsmen will be on the ice versus LaSalle to give them a true test in a scrimmage versus LaSalle 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27. Shenendehowa hosts Mamaroneck 8 p.m. Dec. 7 as part of the annual Don Kauth Tournament at the Prestige Services Arena in Clifton Park.