Think I broke the small cable behind the screen. Big problem?

Hi all,

I put an SSD in my iMac a month ago. Things seemed to go fine. After the big quake in Japan on Friday my iMac died. So I opened it up and started fiddling. Basically the SSD was dead, so I took it out and put the 1gb drive back in. When plugging in the little cable behind the screen on the left (as you're looking at the Mac as if you were using it) I noticed the metal tracks were damaged so the cable probably isn't doing it's job.

However my Mac started up fine. But I'm a bit worried about the cable.

So, to my question - What is the purpose of the cable? Will my iMac sustain any damage due to using it like this? Can I replace the cable?

Thanks! :)