I have been covering sports for 20 years. I have seen bad calls. I have seen missed penalties, controversial reviews, blown offside decisions. But what happened in the Canada-Czechia Olympic quarterfinal in Milan belongs in a category all by itself.

Czechia had eight skaters on the ice when they scored their third goal. Eight. The limit is six. That is not a judgment call. That is not a borderline interference play open to interpretation. That is a matter of counting to eight instead of six, and the officials on the ice - professional referees at the Olympic Games - did not catch it.

The goal stood. The Czech coaching staff was, according to a scathing TSN report, less than thrilled with the overall officiating of the contest. The photographs of the coaches' bench reactions told a thousand words without a single one needing to be said.

But here is the quote that crystallized this whole debacle. When asked after the game if he had noticed Czechia's extra men on the ice during the third goal, Canada superstar Nathan MacKinnon looked at the reporter with the calm of a man who has seen everything hockey can throw at him and said: "Yeah. The refs didn't though. It's all good."

Folks, that right there is a man who has been beaten by a call he knows he cannot change, being as diplomatic and devastating simultaneously as any athlete has been in recent memory. "It's all good" is the most pointed two-word sports verdict I have heard in years. It is not all good. MacKinnon knows it is not all good. Every person watching knows it is not all good. But what else do you say?

The technical term for this infraction is too many men on the ice - a two-minute minor penalty that should have wiped out the goal and given Canada a power play in a moment that could have changed everything. At the Olympic level, with the world watching, this is an institutional failure that demands accountability.

I am not here to say definitely would have won. Hockey is hockey. But they deserved to play that situation with the correct number of opponents on the ice. They did not get that chance. And what bothers me most is that we have all this technology, all these officials, all these cameras at these Games - and nobody caught a team skating with two extra players. That's what sports is all about, folks - and right now, international hockey officiating is not holding up its end of that bargain.