Auston Matthews had just taken a pass from William Nylander in the slot and was looking to make a play.<\/p>\n
A split-second later, the Toronto Maple Leafs captain was lying prone on the ice in agony clutching his left leg \u2014 another brutal scene in a season that has gone off the rails in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n
Toronto\u2019s captain left Thursday\u2019s 6-4 victory over Anaheim and did not return after taking a knee-on-knee hit in the second period from bruising Ducks defenceman Radko Gudas.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirty play,\u201d said Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube, who didn\u2019t have an update on his star centre. \u201cLeague\u2019s going to obviously look at it and see what the suspension will be or whatever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s done a few of those before in his career,\u201d winger Matthew Knies added of Gudas.<\/p>\n
None of the four other Toronto players on the ice \u2014 Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Brandon Carlo and Easton Cowan \u2014 did much with their team\u2019s best player down in pain, despite general manager Brad Treliving\u2019s pronouncement following his 2023 hire that the group needed \u201csnot\u201d in its game for just such instances after years of being pushed around in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Rielly and Nylander both indicated they didn\u2019t fully grasp the severity in the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s on me for not responding earlier to Gudas,\u201d Rielly said. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand how bad he got him \u2026 but I take full responsibility for not being the first one in there or being in there quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthews snapped a 12-game goal drought \u2014 the second longest of his career \u2014 earlier in Thursday\u2019s middle period on a power play. The 28-year-old, who scored 69 times in 2023-24, has 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould have probably gone in there,\u201d Nylander said of Matthews-Gudas sequence. \u201cBut in the situation at the time, I didn\u2019t really understand until, like, 15 seconds later there was more than what I thought it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cYa, should have jumped in.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former NHL enforcer with a long history of defending teammates, Berube wasn\u2019t pleased with his players in the moments with Matthews, who had to be helped to the locker room, down in a heap after trying to sidestep Gudas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have had four guys in there,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t happen then, but I thought they responded in the third \u2026 we all would have liked everybody to get in there right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville, meanwhile, defended his player.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no premeditation,\u201d he said. \u201cReflexes did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gudas, a hard-nosed defender whose hit ended Canadian captain Sidney Crosby\u2019s Olympics in the quarterfinals while playing for Czechia, was assessed a five-minute major and game misconduct.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old has had previous run-ins with the department of player safety. Gudas received a 10-game suspension for a slash across the neck of Winnipeg Jets forward Mathieu Perreault during the 2017-18 season. He\u2019s also been banned for interference, an illegal check to the head and slashing since entering the league in 2012-13.<\/p>\n
Maple Leafs centre John Tavares said Gudas is a physical force at all times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s probably what\u2019s kept him in the league,\u201d he said. \u201cYou respect players like that, that have to play that way and whatnot. But that just obviously went too far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gudas was asked following Anaheim\u2019s morning skate about trying to contain Matthews.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gotta be on top of him,\u201d he said. \u201cWe gotta make sure that he doesn\u2019t get space in the middle of the ice \u2026 make his night not enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knies, whose team scored five straight goals after trailing 3-1 to end an ugly 0-6-2 run coming out of the Olympic break that doomed any realistic hope of a 10th straight playoff appearance, said there was plenty of chatter in the locker room in the second intermission.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet some licks on their top players,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating seeing our best player go down like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we stayed on course and didn\u2019t really do anything too stupid. We just fought back and played a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toronto came out with physical intent in the third, including Cowan going after Anaheim defenceman Jackson LaCombe to register his first NHL fight following a hit on Nick Robertson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the importance of sticking up for each other,\u201d Tavares said. \u201cWhether it was (on the Gudas hit) or it was the response to the rest of the game, I think we understood what was required.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally good job of playing hard, playing physical, playing smart, and going at our opponent. Not only playing physical and standing our ground and responding to what happened but doing what we need to do to win the hockey game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Maple Leafs will now wait to see what comes next \u2014 for both Matthews and Gudas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s out of out of my hands,\u201d Tavares said when asked about supplemental discipline. \u201cHopefully the right thing\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auston Matthews had just taken a pass from William Nylander in the slot and was looking to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-533609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}