Mike Weaver, the retired NHL defenceman, has $38,000 worth of new teeth because he blocked shots: “My first thought was about blocking that shot, and my second thought was about seeing the dentist.”

Jay McKee, another retired defenceman, has also lost teeth — “I’ve got a bright smile, and I can’t say they’re real” — and he also briefly lost feeling in both legs after a shot hit him on the belt of his pants, where there is almost no padding. It left his pelvis vibrating like a cell phone for six seconds.

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They were both watching Leafs forward Mitch Marner in those final frantic seconds of Monday night’s first-round playoff game against the Boston Bruins. Marner is an elite talent, but he prostrated himself on the ice to block two key shots to preserve a one-goal lead and an eventual victory in Game 3.

The Leafs have a 2-1 series lead heading into Game 4 on Wednesday, and Marner has two admirers to include on a list that seemed to grow exponentially at the end of those two thwarted shot attempts.

“Most players in Mitch’s position would kind of roll their body and turn their head,” said McKee. “And it was amazing — he just stared the puck down and wanted it to hit him. That, right there, is pure guts and wanting to win more than anything else. And that’s the guy you want on your hockey team.”

“Blocking those shots,” said Weaver, “has hopefully changed his game and taken him to the next level.”

Marner was only officially credited with one blocked shot, but the video replay suggests a wrinkle on the scoresheet. Bruins forward David Pastrnak stepped into a slapshot from the high slot toward a net obscured by six skaters — three from Boston, three from Toronto. Marner was the closest skater, with goaltender Frederik Andersen straining for a view.

He blocked the first shot while standing. He was on all fours as Pastrnak wound up for the second, and he was flat on his belly as time expired, having stopped another shot. Teammates mobbed him as the horn sounded.

“It was right in front of me,” Marner said on Tuesday. “I just tried to kind of starfish on him and try and just take up as much as I can on the ice … just kind of sprawled my arms out. I don’t really know where it hit me.”

He knew the stakes.

“I knew if it got in there, it was going to be kind of a tough shot for Freddy to save,” he said. “It was going to be low and hard, and you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Weaver appeared in more than 600 regular season NHL games. He runs a specialized hockey camp in Toronto dedicated to highlighting the fine motor skills required to play defence. The camp — Defence First Hockey School — outlines the concepts behind proper shot blocking.

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“At the end of the day,” said Weaver, “it’s all about committing to the moment.”

Blocking a shot can be a painful moment for a player, he said, but it can also be meaningful.

“That’s one of the things I’m going to miss the most out of anything: That feeling of coming back to that bench and having all your teammates giving you that tap on the back, or the shin pads,” he said. “That was something that really stuck with me.”

His bottom teeth were not quite as permanent. He lost them over the course of two blocked shots. The first shot collided with his face when he was playing with the Chicago Wolves in the AHL. He was hit from behind as the shot came in from the point, and it hit his face.

He was playing with the Los Angeles Kings a few years later when he called back to Chicago, just to say that he was going in to get his teeth fixed. The Wolves would pay for it. He called on a Friday.

He called back on Monday.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told the Wolves. “I played this weekend and I got a slapshot to the mouth, and all the teeth are out now, so L.A. is paying for it.”

The pain is not what lingered, though. It was the reaction from his teammates. After the impact, the trainer refused to let Weaver return to the game without first undergoing an X-ray to ensure his jaw had not been broken.

Weaver returned to the game.

“It was the most amazing feeling, walking out and sitting out on the bench,” he said. “Every single one of the guys on the bench turned around and looked at me, like, ‘what a crazy MoFo.’”

McKee spent 802 regular season games in an NHL uniform. He is now coach of the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers, and he can still vividly remember coaching against the London Knights when Marner was in uniform.

Even then, he said, if the Rangers had a 5-on-3 power-play, the Knights would send Marner out to be the lone forward.

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“Certainly, you don’t want to see a guy like that get injured — a guy who’s that valuable to a club, both ways on the puck,” said McKee. “But come playoff time? I think the team really bonds through moments like that.”

Leafs coach Mike Babcock said he hoped that kind of moment might become “contagious” for the rest of the team. McKee suggested the contagion of a blocked shot is indeed powerful.

“I think when guys see the respect that’s earned from doing that, they now want to go out and do that,” he said. “When you get into the playoffs, you’ve got to take those chances and take those risks.”

(Photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)