Dylan Strome’s mouth has seen better days. The 27-year-old center went through dental hell during a stretch of three games to end last month, breaking a tooth and needing stitches after taking two high sticks to the face.
Strome was first high-sticked against the Tampa Bay Lightning on November 27. He went through a game against the New York Islanders without further damage before taking a similar shot to the grill against the New Jersey Devils on November 30.
While he hasn’t spent any time out of the lineup due to the injuries, the Capitals center said after practice Monday that he’s still feeling the effects over a week later.
“It wasn’t like horrible, it was just the fact that it was two in the three-game span, which really sucked,” Strome said. “Yeah, I got five stitches on the inside against New Jersey, that was the second one. But the first one, tooth got chipped, and then I went to the dentist on Thanksgiving and had to get a root canal on Thanksgiving morning.
“So, that was whatever, and then three days later, we played in New Jersey, and then I got high-sticked and the tooth that was chipped, which was fine, now I’m going to the dentist tomorrow to get it fixed. Not sure what I’ve got to do yet, but I feel like they’re all going to come out at some point and just try to — yeah, this sucks. Can’t bite anything right now.”
Strome says he isn’t in too much pain from the consecutive blows to the mouth but is more irked about just going through daily life with some messed-up chiclets. He had to take a family Christmas photo with Santa while sporting a heavily swollen mouth and a scab under the right side of his bottom lip.
“Yeah, just because everything you do, you don’t realize — it was really frustrating for a couple days: I would wake up and then forget my teeth were hurting, so then accidentally bite down,” Strome said. “You don’t realize how much your teeth touch other things in your mouth or when your teeth touch your tongue or something, and it’s just frustrating. But, you know, there’s worse things that you could hurt, I think, for sure. But it’s just one of those things that’s annoying more than anything.”
The Capitals’ leading scorer isn’t sure if he’ll decide to get everything in his mouth patched up just in case he suffers more lousy luck during his career.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Strome said. “I haven’t really had, knock on wood, too bad of dental work, so this is kind of my first real, actually having to get stuff done. I don’t know if I have to get them removed. [The dentist] said, ‘I think they’re both dead, so at some point, they’re going to have to come out.’ But a lot of people just wait until they’re done playing, just in case it happens again. So, I don’t know. I’m going to find out more tomorrow.”
After his longest streak without a point this season, three games, Strome broke through to score the insurance goal in Washington’s 4-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night. He has 35 points (9g, 26a) in 27 games this year and, clearly, now, the team’s dentist on speed dial.
