The NHL Player Safety department blew it with Friday’s five-game suspension of Radko Gudas for kneeing Auston Matthews and ending his season.
And it blew it once it had announced that the Anaheim Ducks captain was having a phone hearing rather than being offered an in-person hearing.
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An in-person hearing would have allowed the league to suspend Gudas six games or more. A phone hearing carries a maximum of five games. The defenseman was going to miss the next game anyway. A delayed hearing would have given the league a chance to find out the severity of the Maple Leafs captain’s injury.
The rule is you suspend for the nature of the infraction and then you factor in if there was an injury. But the full extent of the injury wasn’t known when Player Safety’s announcement about holding a hearing went out on social media at 9:44 a.m. ET. Matthews didn’t get an MRI until the afternoon and the Maple Leafs put out their release at 7:23 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour before the suspension was announced.
So, let’s compare the actions and history of Gudas and the last person to receive a five-game suspension: Pittsburgh Penguins star Evgeni Malkin, also after a phone hearing.
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Malkin lost his temper this month after being cross-checked and gave a hard slash to the side of Buffalo Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin’s head. Reckless? Yes. Deserving of a suspension? Yes. Dahlin finished the game, however.
NHL Player Safety noted in its video that Gudas was “in control of this play.” It said he led with his knee when approaching Matthews and when he wasn’t lined up properly to deliver a full-body hit, he “leans toward contact with Matthews in a way that results in a forceful, dangerous and direct knee-on-knee collision.”
Matthews grabbed at his knee after he fell and needed assistance to get off the ice. He was done for the game and, it turns out, for the season.
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Now, look at their histories. Malkin had been suspended two previous times for a total of five games, the last one in 2022 for a stick infraction. He also was fined recently for a stick infraction.
Gudas has been suspended four times for a total of 21 games, one of them for 10 games in 2017. As the video noted, the last one was seven years ago. That’s well before Malkin’s last infraction, but the history is still bad.
Matthews’ agent, Judd Moldaver, said he was “disappointed and shocked” by the ruling.
“A phone hearing and 5 games is laughable and preposterous,” he said in a statement to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. “While the process is set in our CBA, that this was the discipline is reckless and ridiculous. This decision results in a further loss of confidence in the disciplinary process for all players. Players and fans deserve better. The Player Safety Department should be suspended.”
Player Safety has to be able to defend its ruling on appeal. But there have been instances of in-person hearings being offered and suspensions of less than six games being handed down, such as Morgan Rielly getting five games in 2024.
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Malkin deserved his five-game suspension. Considering the severity of Matthews’ injury, Gudas might have deserved more.
But the NHL didn’t get a chance because it boxed itself in when it announced the type of hearing.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Radko Gudas suspension length a failure by NHL Player Safety
