ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 Radko Gudas knew what was coming when the Toronto Maple Leafs arrived in town to play his Anaheim Ducks on Monday. It had been 18 days since Gudas\u2019 knee-on-knee hit to Auston Matthews ended the season of the Toronto captain with a torn MCL.<\/p>\n
Gudas, on the ice for the opening faceoff, immediately dropped his gloves as the puck dropped, as did Toronto\u2019s Max Domi. Domi got the upper hand early and threw several punches as Gudas seemed more willing to absorb the blows.<\/p>\n
Gudas, the Ducks\u2019 captain, already has served a five-game suspension and, in advance of the teams\u2019 first meeting since the hit, he fully expected on-ice retribution from the Leafs. It didn\u2019t take long, on a strange night when Toronto took the ice just two hours after the announced firing of general manager Brad Treliving<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gudas had expressed remorse for Matthews\u2019 injury<\/a> last week, but nobody expected things to end there.\u00a0On Monday morning, Gudas \u2014 whose status for the game had been in question because of an injury \u2014 said, \u201cI\u2019m standing behind my own mistakes. I want to address it myself. That\u2019s one of the reasons. Hundred percent. One of those games where I have to play.\u201d<\/p>\n Rough play continued throughout the game. In the second period, Toronto\u2019s Michael Pezzetta went after Gudas after he made a breakout pass deep in his zone. Pezzetta received a two-minute penalty for roughing, a 10-minute misconduct and a game misconduct. Later in the period, Gudas and Toronto\u2019s Jake McCabe had a brief fight during a post-whistle scrum in front of the Toronto net. Gudas received an extra two-minute penalty for roughing. Domi also got tossed from the game after a second-period fight with Pavel Mintyukov.<\/p>\n Gudas\u2019 five-game suspension<\/a> was widely criticized<\/a> for being too light. George Parros, who is head of the NHL\u2019s Department of Player Safety and recently defended the process<\/a> that led to the suspension, was in town for Monday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n Presumably, that was to give a preemptive warning to both clubs not to have the game descend into something that would give the league a black eye. Ducks coach Joel Quenneville anticipated a physical game but also added a proviso. \u201cLet\u2019s be smart about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Leafs opted not to declare their intentions before the game.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna worry about just one player,\u201d Morgan Rielly said Monday. \u201cWe have to go out and play well.\u201d<\/p>\n Matthews underwent surgery to repair his MCL this month, with an expected recovery time of approximately 12 weeks. The repercussions of the play have lingered. The Leafs\u2019 initial response to Gudas\u2019 actions was absent, which caused a wave of backlash within the organization, with coach Craig Berube blasting his team privately during the intermission that followed the play and publicly after the game.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should\u2019ve had four guys in there doing something about it,\u201d Berube said.<\/p>\n Two of the players on the ice at the time of the collision \u2014 Rielly and William Nylander \u2014 spoke with regret about not confronting Gudas. And while the Leafs did deliver a fiery third period afterward, it wasn\u2019t nearly enough to make up for not defending their captain more forcefully.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately,\u201d Rielly said that night, \u201cwhen your captain goes down like that on a dirty play, you have to respond as a group. But I also take responsibility for not being the first one in there after the hit.\u201d<\/p>\n Gudas\u2019 suspension was his fifth in his 14-year career and his first since 2019. He\u2019s also had 50 fights in the NHL, according to the website HockeyFights. Gudas missed the Ducks\u2019 game on Saturday with an undisclosed lower-body injury but was on the ice for the morning skate on Monday.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a pro,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cHe\u2019s played a lot of games. He knows the game, the competition. The way he plays. He pushes the envelope, and sometimes there\u2019s some other things you\u2019re going to answer to. And I think he knows that. He\u2019s a pro, and he\u2019s a good one. He wants to play and we\u2019ll go.\u201d<\/p>\n Ducks forward Jeffrey Viel, who fought Gudas this season while playing for the Boston Bruins, said, \u201cHe\u2019s our captain, right? Like, he\u2019s our leader. It shows that he\u2019s a great leader and that he wants to play. He wants to get in there, and I respect that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 Radko Gudas knew what was coming when the Toronto Maple Leafs arrived in town to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,2992],"class_list":["post-244443","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\/244443","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=244443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}