It didn’t take long for the Toronto Maple Leafs to address the Radko Gudas situation in Monday’s game.
Forward Max Domi dropped the gloves with Gudas early in the opening period, landing several uppercut punches before taking Gudas to the ice. This comes two and a half weeks after Gudas’ knee-on-knee hit on Auston Matthews resulted in a Grade 3 torn MCL and ended his season.
Both players were given five-minute majors for fighting.
Gudas left last Thursday’s game against the Calgary Flames with a lower-body injury and did not play Saturday in Edmonton. But the Ducks captain said before puck drop Monday that he wanted to answer the bell against Toronto.
“Stand behind my own mistakes,” Gudas said via TSN’s Mark Masters. “I want to address it myself, so that’s one of the reasons, 100 per cent. That’s one of those games where I have to play.”
He also said he was expecting fireworks on Monday.
“When it’s addressed early in the game everybody can, I don’t want to say relax a little bit, but everybody knows that the thing is going to [be] addressed,” Gudas said. “I would assume something like that’s going to happen again.”
Gudas received a five-game suspension for the hit on Matthews, though several Leafs players and head coach Craig Berube felt the punishment should have been more severe.
Berube also criticized the Leafs’ lack of response to the initial hit on March 12.
“We all kind of saw the media after that game, so we know that it’s going to be an emotional game out there,” said Ducks rookie Beckett Sennecke via Masters.
“We’re a strong, hard team to play against so we’re excited for the challenge.”