Anaheim Ducks captain Radko Gudas said he feels \u201cterrible\u201d for the injury that ended the season of Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews.<\/p>\n
Gudas, who served a five-game suspension<\/a> for a knee-to-knee hit on Matthews on March 12, is eligible to return to the Ducks for their game Tuesday night against the Vancouver Canucks. Gudas addressed the incident for the first time following Anaheim\u2019s morning skate Tuesday at Rogers Arena. Gudas said he contacted Matthews and let him know he never intended to hurt him on the play.<\/p>\n \u201cI really hate the way it ended up, the point of contact,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cI\u2019m not a fan of that. I never want to injure anybody out there. It\u2019s a hard-fought game. It\u2019s just, yeah, I never want to go out there and hurt anybody. I feel terrible about the outcome. I just committed to the play, and unfortunately that was the point of contact.\u201d<\/p>\n Matthews underwent surgery Thursday to repair a Grade 3 medial collateral ligament tear with an expected recovery time of 12 weeks. The 28-year-old center finished his season with 27 goals and 26 assists in 60 games for the Leafs, who are 29-29-13 and will not make the playoffs.<\/p>\n Gudas\u2019 five-game suspension by the NHL\u2019s Department of Player Safety was met with widespread criticism<\/a> for being too lenient. The 35-year-old defenseman was given a five-minute major and game misconduct for kneeing, but the light additional ban, combined with Matthews\u2019 status as an NHL superstar, drew enough condemnation that Department of Player Safety head George Parros spoke publicly<\/a> to defend the process used to arrive at the punishment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve got to learn,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to be better as a hockey player. I never want to go out there and hurt anybody. It\u2019s very unfortunate. I reached out to him, too. We spoke. I never want to see anybody get hurt, so I feel very terrible about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Gudas is in his third season with the Ducks and his second as their captain. The suspension was the fifth in his 14-year NHL career but his first since 2019, when he played for the Philadelphia Flyers and got two games for a high stick to Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov.<\/p>\n An unrestricted free agent this summer, Gudas said he has worked hard to play his physical game without crossing the line. He said he respected the NHL\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve tried to stay on the good side,\u201d he said. \u201cI stayed for a long time, over seven years since my last incident. I\u2019m doing everything in my power to stay away, to stay on the right side, to play hard, but be on the good side of it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think every player needs to develop as his career goes on, get better and improve in every aspect of his game to stay in the league and stay on the top of those levels. So yeah, definitely development. Learning. A lot of stuff goes into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the past two months, Gudas has come under other scrutiny. During the Olympics, when he played for the Czech Republic, he delivered a hit to Canada captain Sidney Crosby that left the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar with an MCL sprain<\/a> and ended his tournament.<\/p>\n Canada went on to lose the gold medal game to the United States in overtime, but Crosby later said he had no issue with Gudas\u2019 hard check. In that same quarterfinal game, Gudas was heard using what can be considered a homophobic slur after being given a roughing penalty in a battle with Canada\u2019s Brandon Hagel. He later apologized for the incident<\/a> and said he understood why his language was considered offensive.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the heat of the moment, the emotions got the best of me and I\u2019m sorry for the way it looks in all of hockey,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cNothing I can do about right now, but I feel sorry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anaheim Ducks captain Radko Gudas said he feels \u201cterrible\u201d for the injury that ended the season of Toronto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,2992],"class_list":["post-234839","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-toronto-maple-leafs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234839","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=234839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}