IRVINE, Calif. (AP) — Radko Gudas has been named the first captain of the Anaheim Ducks since Ryan Getzlaf's retirement two seasons ago.
The Ducks made the announcement on the first day of training camp Thursday.
Gudas joined Anaheim a year ago as a free agent. The 34-year-old Czech defenseman had six goals, 12 assists and 128 penalty minutes last season while providing badly needed veteran leadership for the Ducks' talented young core.
Gudas is the ninth captain in Ducks history. He is their first European captain since Teemu Selanne, who served as co-captain with Paul Kariya during the 1997-98 season.
The Ducks spent the past two seasons without a captain for the first time in team history following the retirement of Getzlaf, who had been their captain for 12 seasons since 2010. The playmaking center was by far Anaheim’s longest-serving captain.
Anaheim went with a series of alternate captains instead for the past two seasons, most prominently veteran defenseman Cam Fowler, who has been with the Ducks for his entire NHL career since 2010.
Gudas’ appointment by general manager Pat Verbeek and second-year head coach Greg Cronin establishes a more traditional leadership structure for the Ducks, who have missed the playoffs in six consecutive seasons, the longest drought in team history.
“Radko emerged as a natural leader who encompasses all of the qualities of a captain and the respect of his teammates, our staff and his peers,” Verbeek said in a statement. “With a young group of players establishing themselves in the NHL, we felt it was necessary to have a veteran lead our team. Radko exemplifies what it means to be a professional, how to carry yourself on and off the ice and in the community, and be a mentor to our young group that will become the next leaders of the team.”
The Ducks are the fifth NHL team for Gudas, who moved to North America as a teenager. He also won a gold medal with the Czech Republic at the world championships this summer.
Early in his career with Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, Gudas had a reputation as a feisty defenseman who regularly delivered questionable hits leading to league scrutiny and condemnation from opponents. Gudas has matured during his years in the NHL, making more recent stops in Washington and Florida before he joined the Ducks.
Anaheim lost a franchise-record 50 games in regulation last season while finishing seventh in the Pacific Division. The Ducks haven't finished higher than sixth in the division since 2018, the year of their last playoff appearance.
Gudas is the sixth player from the Czech Republic to be named an NHL captain. He joins Peter Stastny (Quebec, 1985-90), Jaromir Jagr (Pittsburgh, 1998-01, and New York Rangers, 2006-08), Patrik Elias (New Jersey, 2006-07), Bobby Holik (Atlanta, 2007-08) and Milan Hejduk (Colorado, 2011-12).
The Ducks open the regular season Oct. 12 at San Jose. Their home opener is Oct. 16 against Utah.
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL
FILE - Anaheim Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas (7) looks on in the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Colorado Avalanche, Dec. 5, 2023, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese prosecutors said Tuesday they will not appeal the acquittal of the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate in a retrial last month, bringing closure to the 1966 murder case after more than a half-century of legal battles.
Prosecutor-general Naomi Unemoto said the prosecution decided not to appeal the Shizuoka District Court decision that found Iwao Hakamada not guilty in a retrial 58 years after his arrest, saying: “We feel sorry for putting him in a legally unstable situation for an extremely long time.”
Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty on Oct. 26 by the Shizuoka court, which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hourslong interrogations.
The top prosecutors’ decision to not appeal two days before the Oct. 10 deadline finalizes Hakamada’s acquittal by the district court.
”I’m delighted that we finally resolved this. Case closed,” his 91-year-old sister Hideko Hakamada told reporters after getting a phone call from her lawyer about the prosecutors’ decision.
“I kind of knew this was going to happen,” Hakamada said, with a laugh.
Unemoto, in a statement on the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office website, also apologized for Hakamada's decades-long unstable legal situation amid a lengthy court process and pledged to investigate why the retrial took so long. She expressed dissatisfaction over the court decision that investigators had fabricated evidence.
Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive and three of his family members and setting fire to their home in central Japan. He was sentenced to death in 1968 but was not executed, due to the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s notoriously slow-paced justice system.
His acquittal became official on Wednesday when the Shizuoka prosecutors office submitted the paper waving the right to appeal.
The Shizuoka prefectural police chief, Takayoshi Tsuda, told reporters he hoped to directly apologize to Hakamada. He expressed regret for the victims' families that the case ended without finding the culprit.
Hakamada became the fifth death row inmate to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japan, where prosecutors have a more than 99% conviction rate and retrials are extremely rare.
He spent more than 45 years on death row, making him the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate, according to Amnesty International.
With Tuesday’s settlement of the retrial ruling, Hakamada is now entitled to receive government compensation of up to about 200 million yen ($1.4 million).
His lawyer Hideyo Ogawa has said his defense team is considering filing a damage suit against the government and the Shizuoka prefecture over the collaboration of prosecutors and police in fabricating evidence, despite knowing it could send Hakamada to the gallows.
FILE - Iwao Hakamada, 88-year-old former boxer who has been on death row for nearly six decades after his murder conviction that his lawyers said was based on forced confession and fabricated evidence, goes for a walk in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, central Japan, on Sept. 26, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP, File)
