the Department of Player Safety explanation video said<\/a>, “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.”<\/p>\nGudas 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. It is the discretion of the NHL’s Department of Player Safety to decide on what type of hearing is had for each play depending on severity.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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“That was the turning point,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville told local media. “It was a penalty. I’m not complaining about the call. There was no premeditation. Reflexes did it.”<\/p>\n
This is Gudas\u2019 fifth career suspension\u2013first 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.<\/p>\n
Gudas was last suspended for two games in 2018 for a high-stick on Tampa Bay\u2019s Nikita Kucherov. He earned a 10-game suspension in 2017 for a two-handed slash to the neck of Winnipeg\u2019s Mathieu Perreault.<\/p>\n
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Gudas was last suspended for a hit in 2016, where he took a six-game ban for a late and high interference hit on Boston\u2019s Austin Czarnik. He was handed his first suspension in 2015\u2013three games for a hit to the head of then-Ottawa Senator Mika Zibanejad.<\/p>\n
This is the NHL\u2019s first suspension for kneeing since 2023, when a four-game suspension was given to the Kings\u2019 Arthur Kaliyev for kneeing the Ducks\u2019 Chase De Leo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO — With the Toronto Maple Leafs losing their captain for the remainder of the season, the Anaheim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,1733,2084,532,154,59229,1739,5,186,52422,160,4,1335,9464,66,31,77],"class_list":["post-503024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheimducks","tag-arthur-kaliyev","tag-austin-czarnik","tag-auston-matthews","tag-boston","tag-chase-de-leo","tag-ducks","tag-hockey","tag-kings","tag-mathieu-perreault","tag-mika-zibanejad","tag-nhl","tag-nikita-kucherov","tag-radko-gudas","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-winnipeg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116227744862014445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}