Rules rules rules

There's going to be an uproar in St Louis, after the on-ice referees and linesmen missed an obvious hand-pass, leading to San Jose's Erik Karlsson scoring the winning goal in overtime of game 3 of the Western Conference Final.

None of that make any sense to you? That's fair.

As you may or may not have noticed, I LOVE ice hockey, and I'm well and truly engrossed in the playoffs, currently at the conference finals stage (final two teams in the east, and the final two teams remaining in the west). In the west, St Louis are playing San Jose, and game three has just reached a dramatic conclusion in sudden-death overtime.

With the series level at one game apiece, St Louis lit the lamp four times in the second period, and held on to a precarious 4-3 lead late in the third and final term. With their goaltender sitting on the bench in favour of an extra attacker, San Jose were throwing everything at the St Louis net in the hopes of levelling the score and sending the game into extra time, whereby the first team to score wins. As it so happened, they did score, and off to overtime we went, where San Jose eventually prevailed.

However, the play that lead to EK65 (Erik Karlsson, one of the best defencemen in the game) scoring the game winner involved an illegal hand-pass by Timo Meier, though the goal stood. Why is that?

According to the NHL rulebook, the type of pass made by Timo IS illegal, and play must be stopped when the referees or linesmen identify a situation whereby a player uses their hand to direct the puck to a teammate or to gain a positional advantage (unless the player is in their own defensive zone). Unfortunately for St Louis and everybody rooting for them, all four on-ice officials managed to miss the incident, and Meier, from his knees, used his hand to direct the puck to Gustav Nyquist, who then made the pass to EK65 who slotted home the game winner.

A number of the St Louis players saw the handpass, and were livid with the non-call - Brayden Schenn was spotted smashing his stick into the glass right by the gathering officials when he realised the goal was going to count. Why then, was the goal allowed to count, even though all replays showed a clear violation of the rules?

Well, upon further digging through the NHL rulebook, article 38.4 lists the situations that can be subjected to video review, and an illegal hand-pass in the build-up to the play is not one of them. If the puck had been played with a high-stick as opposed to Meier's hand, THAT would've been reviewable. But, as it stands, the on-ice officials missed the infraction and allowed the play to carry on.

In any sport subject to human officiating, there's always going to be errors. Sometimes they go your way, sometimes they completely bury you. Unfortunately, St Louis were on the receiving end of some terrible human error in a game with a lot on the line.

There'll be a lot of head-scratching going on among NHL fans in the aftermath of this game, but today I learned exactly why the result was left to stand.