Eric Belanger extracts own tooth on bench, but that's not the worst part

As a matter of practice, I generally try to avoid publishing two posts containing video in a row, but in this particular case, I was willing to make a cringe-worthy exception.
Here’s the bit: the first person who argues that hockey players aren’t the toughest athletes on the planet, provide me your address and I will send you a hockey stick with which you can bash yourself in the face and a pair of pliers to extract the loosened teeth out of your bloodied mouth.
Last night, Washington Capitals center Eric Belanger suffered through a similar experience. After receiving an inadvertent high stick to the mouth from Montreal Canadiens defenseman (and former teammate with the Minnesota Wild – the nerve!) Marc-Andre Bergeron, Belanger went down. Quickly.
After dragging himself and his busted up mouth to the bench, Belanger performed oral surgery upon himself (without a license, even), pulling out his own bloodied tooth which had been loosened out of its socket.
Video after the jump. Warning: not for the highly squeamish.

Yeesh. I suppose it could have been much worse. Oh yeah, it was much worse. According to a tweet from the Washington Capitals earlier today [H/T Puck Daddy], Belanger lost not one, but SEVEN teeth as a result of the play. Holy moly. Seven teeth. That’s one more than six teeth getting knocked out, and we all know how that goes, right?
In any event, it certainly appears that Belanger will be eating only milkshakes and yogurt for the foreseeable future. Better yet, someone should buy him a Super Bass-o-Matic ’76.You know, for his efforts. To literally add insult to injury, the Caps failed to close out the Canadiens, dropping the game by a score of 2-1 to the Habs. The series has been now extended to a sixth game – which I suppose provides Belanger with yet another opportunity to demonstrate his toughness. Who knows? Maybe he will perform an emergency appendectomy on himself in the next game. He’s got the blade on his skate and everything.
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Video: Eric Belanger pulls out own tooth [Pro Hockey Talk]
Video: Eric Belanger takes high stick, plays dentist on himself [Puck Daddy]
Halak, Canadiens edge Capitals 2-1, force Game 6 [NBC Sports/AP]