I Can't Believe The Refs Left Erik Karlsson Wide Open On The Backdoor Like That
So a lot of people are upset about this overtime game winning goal from last night’s game 3 between the San Jose Sharks and the St. Louis Blues. Unfortunately, however, people are big time mad about all the wrong things. Now don’t get me wrong. I understand that in a perfect world, this puck doesn’t have the chance to make its way over to Erik Karlsson in the first place because the play would be whistled dead for a hand pass. But here’s the thing–hand pass or not, Erik Karlsson doesn’t score that game winning goal if this wasn’t the position he found himself in.
We’ve got 5 Blues players practically standing on top of one another, and then we have Erik Karlsson standing there naked in the slot. Doesn’t seem ideal to me!
And that right there, my friends, is where the real outrage should lie. Because here’s some BREAKING NEWS for all of you at home: NHL refs suck. They always have and they always will. There are countless amounts of missed calls throughout every game. That’s just a fact of life. In fact, there was a missed call just seconds before this goal was scored because Timo Meier had just gotten tripped. You’ve got all these people out there screaming about “how could 4 NHL officials miss that blatant hand pass??”. Well the answer is because they all just saw that trip and were trying to assess whether or not it should have been a penalty. By the time it even registers, the puck is in the back of the net. And that’s the only reason there was a hand pass in the first place. If Timo Meier doesn’t get tripped, there’s no hand pass there. Just saying.
Even still, the refs didn’t decide to just leave Erik Karlsson in the slot. Seems like a bit of a defensive oversight from the Blues there, if we’re being completely honest. I mean Brayden Schenn was in perfect position there but then he starts drifting over toward the puck and all of a sudden the crease is wide open.
So what did we learn here today in this extremely rational breakdown? We learned that the St. Louis Blues don’t lose on that specific play last night if they didn’t trip Timo Meier in the first place, and if they didn’t decide to just leave Erik Karlsson all alone in the slot. You can cry about the missed handpass all you want but those are just the facts.
And oh yeah, never forget