Anaheim Ducks captain Radko Gudas has been suspended for five games and fined $104,166.65 by the NHL’s Department of Player Safety on Friday for his knee-to-knee hit on Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews during the Leafs’ 6-4 win on Thursday night.
It is the fifth suspension for Gudas in his 14-year NHL career and his first since 2019, when he got two games for high-sticking Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov. Gudas’ longest suspension was 10 games, given after he slashed Mathieu Perreault in the neck in 2017. The 35-year-old Gudas will be eligible to return on March 24 for Anaheim’s road game against the Vancouver Canucks.
The league did not consider Gudas as a “repeat offender” when it came to the amount of his fine, because it had been more than 18 months since Gudas’ last incident. But a player’s overall history can be taken into consideration when determining supplemental discipline.
At 15:47 of the second period on Thursday, and with the Ducks holding a 3-2 lead, Gudas stretched his bent left leg out and caught Matthews’ left knee after Matthews took a pass in the slot area within the Anaheim zone and readied for a scoring chance.
Matthews went down in pain, left the ice without putting weight on his leg and did not return to the game. Gudas was given a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct penalty, and Toronto scored twice on the resulting power play to take the lead on the way to snapping an eight-game winless streak.
Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said he felt there was no premeditation by Gudas on the play, but Toronto coach Craig Berube and Leafs center John Tavares called it a dirty hit. The Leafs initially didn’t respond on the ice but got physical with Anaheim in the third period, including a fight by rookie Easton Cowan against Ducks defenseman Jackson LaCombe.
“It was a little back-and-forth game like that,” LaCombe said. “A little chippy. I guess I just hit one of their guys and he stepped in for his teammate. It was expected. Just one of those that’s part of the game. I was expecting it.”
The Ducks could have newly acquired John Carlson ready to step in and fill Gudas’ absence. Carlson, whom Anaheim got from the Washington Capitals at last week’s trade deadline, has been skating with the team the last several days as he recovers from a lower-body injury that’s kept him out of action since Feb. 6. Anaheim could have an all-veteran right side of its blue line when Gudas returns to go with Carlson and Jacob Trouba, complementing its young puck movers on the left.
Gudas has two goals, 11 assists, 45 penalty minutes and a minus-1 rating for Anaheim, which holds a slim lead in the Pacific Division as it attempts to make the playoffs for the first time since 2018.