Radko Gudas suspended, Robert Hagg fined

The NHL announced today that Flyers’ defensemen Radko Gudas has been suspended two games for high-sticking Nikita Kucherov in last night’s contest versus the Lightning.

Call it high-sticking, slashing, or just incredibly irresponsible, the end result is ugly. In the words of Mike Leggo, you can’t do that. Gudas is a repeat offender, which comes into play when determining the length of a suspension, and quite honestly he could’ve been hit with a much longer suspension than he did. He’s lucky that he’ll only be missing two, even if the two games are massive.

The Flyers will be without Gudas on Thursday when they face the Montreal Canadiens, who are eight points ahead of the Flyers and currently holding the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, and again on Saturday when they face the Pittsburgh Penguins outdoors. The Penguins sit third in the Metropolitan Division, and own the exact same record that the Canadiens do. Two massive games for the playoff believers, and the Flyers will be without their most consistent defenseman this season for both of them.

In related news, defenseman Robert Hagg has been fined $3,091.40 for an incident that also occurred in last night’s game.

This is the first time that Hagg has received supplemental discipline at the NHL level, and it’s certainly warranted. There is no reason to initiate contact with Cedric Paquette here, and he makes contact with his head. Both of these plays served no purpose and were, quite frankly, dumb.