TORONTO \u2014 For the second month in a row, Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas is at the center of another injury controversy.<\/p>\n
William Nylander broke a tie on a power play 36 seconds into the third period and the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Ducks, 6-4, on Thursday night to end an eight-game losing streak, but their victory was tempered by the loss of captain Auston Matthews following a knee-on-knee hit from Gudas with four minutes left in the second period.<\/p>\n
Trying to make a move around Gudas in the slot, Matthew took a direct blow to his left leg and crashed to the ice. The U.S. Olympic captain stayed down before being helped to the locker room.<\/p>\n
Gudas, the bruising Czech defender whose hit ended Canadian captain Sidney Crosby\u2019s Olympics in the quarterfinals last month, was assessed a 5-minute major penalty and a game misconduct.<\/p>\n
Matthews, a two-time All-Star, snapped a 12-game goal drought earlier in the period on a power play. The center has 27 goals and 26 assists in 60 games this season.<\/p>\n
Matias Maccell had a goal and two assists, and John Tavares and Benoit-Olivier Groulx also scored for Toronto. Matthew Knies had three assists to go along with an empty-net goal, and Nylander added two assists. Joseph Woll made 36 saves in the Maple Leafs\u2019 first home win since Jan. 10, ending an 0-6-2 home skid.<\/p>\n
Cutter Gauthier, Ian Moore, Pavel Mintyukov and Alex Killorn scored for the Pacific Division-leading Ducks, who have lost two of their past three games. Jeffrey Viel notched two assists, and Lukas Dostal stopped 22 shots.<\/p>\n
Michael Pezzetta, promoted by the Maple Leafs on Thursday from the Toronto Marlies of the AHL, fought with Viel at the opening faceoff.<\/p>\n
Maccelli opened the scoring at 7:19 of the first period. He stole the puck from Jackson LaCombe at the Toronto blue line and steamed down the right wing before shooting from the circle.<\/p>\n
Seconds after a Toronto penalty expired, Gauthier scored at 12:19 on a carom off the end boards.<\/p>\n
The Ducks took a 2-1 lead at 14:26 of the first on Moore\u2019s shot from the inner edge of the right circle off Jansen Harkins\u2019 pass from behind the goal line.<\/p>\n
Mintyukov scored from the left circle at 2:55 of the second period on a pass from Ryan Poehling for a 3-1 edge.<\/p>\n
Matthews scored with a one-timer from the right circle during a power play at 10:47 of the second. Jacob Trouba was off for tripping.<\/p>\n
Tavares scored on the power play following Matthews\u2019 injury, burying a 47-footer at 16:26 of the second to knot the game at 3-3.<\/p>\n
Nylander produced the second goal during Gudas\u2019 major 34 seconds into the third period to give Toronto the lead.<\/p>\n
Groulx scored a short-handed goal at 8:35 of the third, his second career NHL goal and his first since Nov. 7, 2021.<\/p>\n
Knies scored into an empty net at 18:12 and Killorn scored for the Ducks at 19:34 of a chippy third period that featured assorted skirmishes.<\/p>\n
More to come on this story.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
The Ducks play at Ottawa on Saturday at 10 a.m. PT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 For the second month in a row, Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas is at the center of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,127],"class_list":["post-217533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}