NHL's Lame Apology to Blues for Awful Missed Hand Pass Isn't Remotely Good Enough

NHL officiating has had some very bad moments thus far in these playoffs, in which the league has had to publicly apologize to those on the losing end.

The first came in Game 7 of the first round, where the Vegas Golden Knights were assessed a 5-minute major for a penalty that probably should've been a minor at worst, which ended up benefiting the San Jose Sharks who completed a 4-goal comeback with a man advantage and eventually won the game.

Another bad call of arguably the same caliber occurred in Game 3 on Wednesday night, in which the officials did not call an obvious hand pass on a play leading to the winning goal in OT by the Sharks. The league had to once again apologize for an awful call that directly influenced the outcome of the game, and perhaps the series when it is all said and done.

The NHL's Bill Daly came out on Thursday with an explanation, deflecting blame and standing by their officials, simply saying that "mistakes happen." While that is true, mistakes like these can be so easily avoided by making a quick call to Toronto. The apology does not come close to helping the Blues cope with a terrible mistake, being that it still results in them being down in the Western Conference Finals.

The blatant hand pass was by Timo Meier, who shoveled the puck over to Gustav Nyquist, setting up Erik Karlsson for the overtime winning goal. The officials would not even entertain the Blues' pleas after the call on the ice. They went to the officials circle for a short amount of time, then skated directly off the ice.

Per the NHL rule book, this was not a reviewable play since it was not called on the ice, meaning the officials couldn't have saved themselves even if they had been competent in the first place.

The Sharks walk away from yet another game with a lucky break and a win even through controversy.