IIHF rule explains the camera controversy from World Juniors Final.

There was a major controversy to end the World Junior Championship on Sunday during the final moments of the gold medal game being disputed between the Russians and the Canadians but as it turns out the play may not have been all that controversial at all. 

From our earlier report:

The controversy stems from a moment very late in the third period when the puck appeared to be cleared up and over the glass by a Canadian defender, this as Russian was trying to mount a comeback and Canada was desperately trying to hang on to their lead. Now you would expect this to lead to a delay of game penalty for the Canadians and although the call was made by the linesman on the ice it appears as though he was overruled. You see although the puck clearly traveled up and over the glass here it did not go out of play directly, but instead it struck a camera. It appears as though the camera may be considered "in play" under IIHF rules, otherwise I have no idea why this call would have been overruled on the ice. 

Needless to say the fact that the puck hit the camera was a huge benefit to the Canadian team who not only avoided a penalty in the final moments of the game, but saw the Russians get a penalty of their own just seconds later. That camera by the way is owned and operated by TSN, a Canadian television station dedicated exclusively to sports. Now of course TSN did not try and sway the outcome of the game here, but it does paint an interesting narrative for people to latch onto.

Well as you would expect following such a situation there has been some digging into the IIHF rule book and as it turns out the rule for a situation of this nature is pretty clear. Now you can have plenty of debate about whether or not the rule is a good one, but the rule itself leaves very little doubt that the correct call was made by the officials on the ice.

As you can see based on this section of the rule book, rule v is very clear on this matter. The fact that the puck struck a piece of equipment, regardless of the trajectory of the puck, immediately made this a play in which a penalty could not be awarded.

There were a lot of people upset, as you can see in our earlier report, however it seems that there was no controversy here at all.