Ducks’ Radko Gudas Says He Feels Bad About Ending Auston Matthews’s Season With Ugly Hit

Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas isn’t very well-liked in the NHL right now, and for good reason.

Gudas recently served a five-game suspension for an ugly knee-on-knee hit on Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews on March 12, a reckless play that prematurely ended Matthews’s season. Matthews suffered a Grade 3 MCL tear that required surgery and is expected to recover in 12 weeks.

Gudas addressed his hit on Matthews for the first time Tuesday and said he felt “terrible” about injuring the Toronto star. He also vowed to be better moving forward:

“I really hate the way it ended up, the point of contact,” Gudas said, via The Athletic. “I’m not a fan of that. I never want to injure anybody out there. It’s a hard-fought game. It’s 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.”

“I’ve got to learn,” Gudas continued. “I’ve got to be better as a hockey player. I never want to go out there and hurt anybody. It’s 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.”

Gudas added that he personally reached out to Matthews to tell him he never intended to injure him on the play.

After Gudas was handed his five-game suspension, Matthews’s agent Judd Moldaver criticized the league for levying what he believed was a relatively lenient punishment.

“A phone hearing and five games is just laughable and preposterous. While the hearing process is pre-fixed in our CBA, that there was no further discipline is a reckless and ridiculous position for Player Safety,” Moldaver said.

“This decision results in a further loss of confidence in the disciplinary process for all players. Players and fans deserve better.”

This is hardly the first time Gudas has been in hot water. Gudas, who’s in his third season with the Ducks, served out his fifth suspension of his 14-year career, having developed a notorious reputation as one of the league’s most ruthless enforcers. The 35-year-old defenseman was given a 10-game suspension in November 2017 for slashing an opponent in the neck, and a six-game suspension in October 2016 for delivering an unnecessarily high hit. In total, Gudas has been suspended for 26 games while forfeiting more than $850,000 in salary in his NHL career.

The Ducks defenseman also made headlines for ending Sidney Crosby’s Olympic run when his Czechia side played Canada in the men’s ice hockey quarterfinals of the Milan Cortina Games last month. Gudas’s hard hit on the Canadian captain forced him to leave the contest early, and tests later revealed Crosby suffered an MCL sprain that caused him to miss a chunk of the NHL season. Canada ended up losing to the United States in the gold medal match; afterward, Crosby insisted that he had no problem with Gudas’s hit even though it cut short his third and likely final career Winter Olympics.

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