Auston Matthews Out for Season as Radko Gudas Gets 5-Game Suspension
Zach Cavanaugh
Host · Writer
TORONTO -With the Toronto Maple Leafs losing their captain for the remainder of the season, the Anaheim Ducks will be without their captain for a little while.
Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas was suspended for five games for a knee-to-knee hit on Maple Leafs and USA Olympic gold medal captain Auston Matthews, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced on Friday. The department took into account the kneeing penalty, Matthews’ injury and Gudas’ prior suspension history.
Matthews suffered a Grade 3 MCL tear and quad contusion in the hit on Thursday and was ruled out of Toronto’s 16 remaining games this season.
The Maple Leafs visit Anaheim on March 30–nine games away for the Ducks. Pacific Division-leading Anaheim has 17 games remaining.
In the second period on Thursday, Matthews received a pass in the slot, and Gudas raced back to cover the Leafs’ leading goalscorer. With both knees bent, Gudas reached forward with his stick to try to defend the play, but Matthews made a move to try to avoid the oncoming defenseman.
As Matthews shifted to his backhand and took a step away from Gudas, the Ducks defenseman then shifted to lean forward to the left, which pushed his knee forward directly into the knee of Matthews’ trailing leg.
“We acknowledge Gudas’ assertion that he is attempting to make a full body check and prevent a goal," the Department of Player Safety announcement video said, “but this contact cannot be excused as a play in which evasive or sudden movements by either player are the primary cause of the knee-on-knee contact. If he wants to deliver this hit, the onus is on Gudas to ensure that he makes an approach that allows him to deliver a legal, full-body check."
Gudas was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct for the hit. Both calls were upheld on video review, and the play went to a phone hearing on Friday. Phone hearings limit suspensions to five games or fewer, as opposed to an in-person hearing.
Gudas’ hit and resulting major penalty turned the game, as the Maple Leafs turned a 3-2 Ducks lead into a 4-3 Toronto lead with two power play goals on the five-minute major. Anaheim lost 6-4 after leading 3-1 early in the second period.
This is Gudas’ fifth career suspension–first in seven years and the first for a hit in 10 seasons. The 35-year-old defenseman in his third season with the Ducks has amassed 21 games lost due to suspensions.
Gudas was last suspended for two games in 2018 for a high-stick on Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov. He earned a 10-game suspension in 2017 for a two-handed slash to the neck of Winnipeg’s Mathieu Perreault.
Gudas was last suspended for a hit in 2016, when he took a six-game ban for a late and high interference hit on Boston’s Austin Czarnik. He was handed his first suspension in 2015–three games for a hit to the head of then-Ottawa Senator Mika Zibanejad.
This is the NHL’s first suspension for kneeing since 2023, when a four-game suspension was given to the Kings’ Arthur Kaliyev for kneeing the Ducks’ Chase De Leo.
