It’s usually before Christmas, not after, when you hear about missing front teeth.
Don’t tell Colorado College freshman goaltender Kaidan Mbereko about that, though, or Tigers coach and former Union and professional goalie Kris Mayotte. They’ve now both lost teeth during games, after getting hit in just the right spots on their masks.
Mbereko and backup Matt Vernon combined for 42 saves Friday in CC’s 4-2 upset win at third-ranked St. Cloud State. Mbereko made 20 saves in the first period and had to leave the game late in the second after an SCSU shot broke his two front teeth.
“One completely broke off, and the other was cracked all the way through but still hanging there, so he had to get those taken care of first,” Mayotte said. “The puck hit where the top of the chin meets the bottom of the cage. If it hits you in the right spot, it pushes that part of the mask where your mouth is back into your teeth.
“St. Cloud’s team doctors came over, and we got an appointment where he went to the dentist at 9 a.m. Saturday. They put in two fillings on top, so he had two half teeth, and now that we’ve got back to Colorado Springs, he gets more extensive dental work done. He’s going to get a second opinion on Thursday in terms of how deep the crack on one of them goes to see if he needs a root canal or not, but as of right now, they just put crowns on them.”
The efforts of Mbereko and Vernon weren’t all that led to what Mayotte called the Tigers’ most gritty win from his year and a half to date at CC.
Co-captain and top-two defenseman Bryan Yoon missed most of the game after a blocked shot forced him to seek X-rays on what ended up being a bone bruise in his knee. Fourth-line winger Ray Christy also missed time, but in the end, two Tyler Coffey goals and strong performances in net and by CC’s remaining five defensemen gave the Tigers a fourth win from their last five games.
Mbereko was back between the pipes Saturday, and made 23 saves. CC lost 4-0, but Mayotte felt the final score was indicative of how most of the game went. Three St. Cloud goals in the final 10:04 put the hosts out of sight.
Mayotte heralded Mbereko’s resiliency in a time where, across the world of sports, treatment of head injuries has mainly changed for the better.
“I remember this happening to me, I think in my first year of pro, and I turned around to the ref and showed him my tooth and said, ‘Hey, I lost my tooth,’ and he said, ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about it,’ so I put my mask back down and kept playing,” Mayotte said.
Hindsight helped him laugh as he finished the sentence.
“Fortunately, Vern has been really good this year when called upon,” Mayotte said. “Kaidan has arguably been our best player all year, so to lose him is a big blow, but we had ‘Vern’ ready to step up.”
And Vernon saw out a CC win Friday that snapped The Tigers’ 11-game skid against SCSU since Nov. 2019. Even better, at least for a day, the victory pulled CC level with the Huskies for second place in the NCHC standings.
“To beat a top-five team on the road, in and of itself, is something we hadn’t been able to do,” Mayotte said of a CC team that is on pace for its winningest season in a decade. “That was a big win, but to find a way to do it the way that we did and have a next-man-up mentality where we had the guys step up was really impressive.
“It was (junior defenseman Chase) Foleys’ first game back from an injury, and on St. Cloud’s (Olympic-sized) rink, our plan was to limit him to 15, 17 minutes, and when we went down to five ‘D’ right away, we had guys who we asked a lot of, but they all rose the occasion, and Vern came in cold but was great for us.
“It was one of those games where the team proved something to themselves that they weren’t sure they had in them,” Mayotte continued. “When you’re trying to build a program, confidence and belief are huge parts of what you can accomplish, and to that end, Friday was huge for us.”
