Jack Hughes Shows Off New Teeth at Yankees Opening Day

Team USA hockey hero Jack Hughes was thrilled to be at Yankee Stadium for its 2026 Opening Day between the New York Yankees and Miami Marlins — and he had a brand new smile to prove it.

Hughes, 24, joined women’s hockey goaltender Aerin Frankel to throw out ceremonial first pitches in the Bronx on Friday, April 3, six weeks after each player led their USA hockey teams to gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Hughes, who scored the game-winning goal for Team USA, famously celebrated the gold-medal win with missing front teeth and a bloodied mouth after taking a hit to the face by a stick from Canada’s Sam Bennett in the third period.

Throwing from the base of the mound, both Hughes and Frankel, 26, reached their targets behind home plate on the fly, avoiding the notoriously tough Yankee Stadium boo birds.

“When everything went down, this was the one thing I was wondering if it would happen,” Hughes, an avid Yankees fan, told reporters while showing off his pearly whites. “I knew a lot of things were coming but this is the one thing I was always wishing slash hoping for.”

He added that he was able to talk to Yankees captain Aaron Judge before the game. Judge, 33, also captained Team USA at the 2026 World Baseball Classic, which played out shortly after the Olympics ended.

“Pretty cool with the timing, us winning, then [the WBC] right after,” Hughes continued. “So we were pretty tuned in on that, they were tuned in on us. That was just pretty cool. They were locked in and we were locked in, so we get to share that and obviously we’re pumped to watch them in the Olympics in a couple years.”

A week after getting one of his front teeth knocked out and others chipped during the gold medal game, Hughes assured fans that he planned to get his teeth fixed.

“I can promise you, this won’t be my thing,” Hughes said with a smile during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

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Hughes added, “It’s funny, because, like, since we’ve been back in the U.S., we feel the love like crazy, like so much support. But when people are coming up for a picture, they’ll be like, ‘Smile.’”

Hughes’ mother, Ellen, a former hockey player herself, added that she is “so happy he wears a mouth guard.”

“I can’t even imagine how many more teeth he would have lost without a mouth guard. But it was right in front of us and I can tell you that Quinn, his brother, was on the ice and he saw the teeth go down,” she said during a February appearance on Today. “We saw him picking them up, and I was glad it was teeth and nothing more.”