{"id":86758,"date":"2020-10-09T12:36:54","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T16:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=86758"},"modified":"2020-10-09T12:37:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T16:37:26","slug":"florida-panthers-sign-radko-gudas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2020\/10\/09\/florida-panthers-sign-radko-gudas\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Panthers Sign Radko Gudas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/g\/gudasra01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Radko Gudas<\/a><\/strong><\/strong> has found a new home, signing a three-year deal worth $7.5 million with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/panthers\/\" target=\"_self\">Florida Panthers<\/a>. Gudas&#8217; deal is worth $2.5 million per season and will carry him through the 2022\u201323 season.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"de\">Gudas in FLA is 3x$2.5M<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FriedgeHNIC\/status\/1314605255615750144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 9, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Radko Gudas Signs With Florida Panthers<\/h2>\n<p>The rough-and-tumble defenceman is coming off a four-year, $3.35 million per year contract, signed when he was with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/flyers\/\" target=\"_self\">Philadelphia Flyers<\/a>. Gudas broke into the league with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/lightning\/\" target=\"_self\">Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> in 2012\u201313, quickly earning a reputation as a heavy &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2019\/02\/20\/philadelphia-flyers-radko-gudas-suspended-two-games\/\" target=\"_self\">perhaps borderline<\/a> &#8211; hitter. That reputation kept him in the league early in his career. Since then, however, he has focussed on playing a more responsible game with fewer trips to the penalty box. All told, Radko Gudas has played 479 regular-season NHL games over eight years. For his career, he&#8217;s scored 26 goals, 126 points \u2014 and 619 penalty minutes. He may have eased off hitting as his primary objective, but he certainly didn&#8217;t quit cold turkey.<\/p>\n<p>Gudas was certainly valuable enough for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/capitals\/\" target=\"_self\">Washington Capitals<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2019\/06\/14\/flyers-radko-gudas-traded-to-capitals-for-matt-niskanen\/\" target=\"_self\">trade for him<\/a> at the beginning of the year. He added a physical presence to the Capitals while also scoring two goals and 15 points in 63 regular-season games. He even chipped in two assists in five playoff games as a third-pair defender for 2019\u201320.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means For The Future<\/h3>\n<p>The Florida Panthers know what they&#8217;re getting. Gudas is there as a hard-hitting, right-side defender. He&#8217;s not going to be asked to play 20 minutes a game, nor should he.\u00a0 But he is capable of skating 16\u201318 minutes a night without putting his team at risk. Ideally, his job will be to disrupt any attack while his partner gets the puck out of harm&#8217;s way. At just 30 years of age, he isn&#8217;t a big risk to sign. This is especially true of the expected compressed 2020\u201321 schedule, which is going to be extremely physically taxing.<\/p>\n<p>As for Washington, their right side is anchored by <strong><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/carlsjo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Carlson<\/a><\/strong><\/strong> and <strong><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/o\/orlovdm01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dmitry Orlov<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>, so the loss of Gudas doesn&#8217;t hurt much.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"PFGU8Dx3QO5ooUo1v9b-lg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/1054087512\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'PFGU8Dx3QO5ooUo1v9b-lg',sig:'848psX8riPSqfIlld2z4jONbOF1nAz7EtCHrurNIK9s=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1054087512',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Radko Gudas has found a new home, signing a three-year deal worth $7.5 million with the Florida Panthers. Gudas&#8217; deal is worth $2.5 million per season and will carry him through the 2022\u201323 season. Gudas in FLA is 3x$2.5M \u2014 Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) October 9, 2020 Radko Gudas Signs With Florida Panthers The rough-and-tumble defenceman [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3171,"featured_media":87757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,6,4547,4548],"tags":[106,662,692],"class_list":["post-86758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-panthers","category-hockey","category-nhl","tag-florida-panthers","tag-nhl-free-agency","tag-radko-gudas"],"modified_by":"Nik Kowalski, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}