ST. LOUIS — Cole Perfetti felt certain he’d scored the goal that would bring the Winnipeg Jets back into Game 3.

Sure, when the puck entered Jordan Binnington’s glove and it snapped backward into the net. Sure, when he saw the replay on the Jets bench. And, just when he thought he was as sure as he could get in this particular instance, Perfetti said he heard Enterprise Center’s collective reaction to the replay in the arena.

“Based on their reaction, I thought it was in the net,” Perfetti said of the disappointed “ahh” sound he heard. “I thought you could see the puck on its side in his glove and the glove in the net. I don’t know what else you’ve got to do.”

Perfetti gave Binnington credit for his work on the save. He also admitted his own bias.

“But I was on the goal line and I saw his glove in the net and (the) puck in the mesh of the glove — and you see it pretty evident in the video.”

“I didn’t really see the video of it but I felt it was just too close to tell,” Binnington said.

So Perfetti was sure he’d scored a goal. Binnington wasn’t sure that he’d made a save. Oftentimes, those two statements would tell you everything you need to know about whether or not the shot crossed the goal line. The league-initiated video review of Perfetti’s second-period power-play goal shot did not find the conclusive evidence that it needed to overturn the original call on the ice.

Some angles show a reasonable viewer enough to conclude that the puck probably went into the net. Some angles show enough of the puck beyond the goal line so as to create a reasonable assumption that the puck did cross the goal line. There were no clips that showed enough white space between the puck and the line from a conclusive angle to overturn the call.

That’s all of the focus I’m going to put on a puck that I believe crossed the goal line. I feel confident that, if the original call on the ice had been a goal, the video review would have been simple: There’s no conclusive evidence that the puck didn’t cross the line, either.

But there’s an enormous problem with any takeaway from Game 3 that centers on the missed goal call.

Put on Jets-coloured glasses and Perfetti’s goal, had it counted, would spark a remarkable comeback. It would gain momentum for the visiting team — perhaps enough of it to fuel another third-period comeback. Winnipeg had been dominant to close out Game 1 and Game 2 — why wouldn’t it have done so all over again? After all, if the Jets made it to the third period trailing 3-1 instead of 3-0, then Connor Hellebuyck’s giveaway that led to the 4-1 goal might not have happened. The penalty parade that led to Jordan Kyrou’s 5-on-3 goal could have been avoided. Maybe Luke Schenn wouldn’t have been so easily dispossessed of the puck by Radek Faksa on Alexey Toropchenko’s 6-1 goal that chased Hellebuyck or Colton Parayko wouldn’t have hit a 97.6 mile per hour rocket passed Eric Comrie afterward.

None of this is how hockey works. You deal with the circumstances you’re given and you pick apart your problems if — and only if — doing so helps you solve them.

Nothing about Perfetti’s non-goal changes a fundamental truth about Game 3: The Winnipeg Jets got smoked. They were outskated, outpassed, outhit, out-puck-recovered, and dramatically outscored. This was true long before the midway point of the second period — it was the result of a Blues’ start so dominant that Jets coach Scott Arniel said, “We lost the game in the first period” when asked about the magnitude of the 7-2 final score.

In the rest of his response, Arniel got one point exactly right.

“It’s one game. We lost one game. Whether it’s 7-2 or 1-0, we lost one game in this series,” he said.

So how do the Jets solve the problems St. Louis is creating for them with greater regularity? How does Winnipeg prove it’s not the 2021, 2023, or 2024 team that responded to losing one game by losing three more in a row?

Winnipeg can’t say or do anything about Perfetti’s goal in a way that gets them ready for Game 4. Nor can they stop Pavel Buchnevich from making the brilliant hand-eye play to two-hand his first goal into the net after he’d kicked the puck. They can’t control the bounce the puck took off of Josh Morrissey’s back and onto Buchnevich’s foot, either.

The giveaway Neal Pionk made in the buildup to that goal is a play that can be avoided. The tripping penalty Schenn made that led to Buchnevich’s second goal was ill-advised, too; Schenn struggled with his increased role in Game 3. Buchnevich and Robert Thomas deserve credit for creating a virtually unstoppable deflection for the 2-0 goal, but the Jets made life far too easy for St. Louis to put the Blues up 3-0. Cam Fowler’s partial breakaway goal started on a Blues’ breakout with all five Jets skaters in position.

The first pass beat Alex Iafallo, who was F1 and that’s fine. The second pass got past Mark Scheifele and that’s fine, too — Winnipeg had Pionk, Morrissey, and Kyle Connor back to handle the 3-on-3 rush. That’s when Pionk committed to Buchnevich, stepping up and opening the seam behind him that Fowler attacked. For me, that play is on Pionk and not Iafallo — who was slow to identify Fowler’s rush and never caught him — because Pionk can see the play developing in front of him.

But then you also have Connor watching Fowler jump into the lane. In the replay, you can see Iafallo stutter-step; he seems to think Fowler belongs to one of Connor or Pionk. This missed sort-out gave the Blues a golden opportunity on a play that began in innocuous fashion.

Nothing Fowl about this.

The troubling thing, if you’re Winnipeg, is that this kind of first period execution is nothing new.

The Blues have been better prepared to start all three games of the series so far. (Arniel said he was happy with Winnipeg’s start in Game 2 but, as I wrote, it took some special moments of defending to stop multiple early rush chances by St. Louis in that game.) It’s concerning that the Jets haven’t made it to the second or third period with a lead; both of their wins came by progressively leaning on St. Louis more and more until excellent third periods became too much to handle.

“Starting better is definitely an emphasis for us here going forward in the series, but I think we didn’t execute in the first period and especially the first 10 minutes,” Morrissey said.

The first question Arniel was asked was about the adjustments St. Louis made so as to dominate Game 3.

“Obviously they did, right?” Arniel bristled. “Obviously they made adjustments. We’ll look at their adjustments and obviously we’ll have to do some things as well.”

Arniel has found the answers throughout the regular season. Winnipeg was able to win 56 games in no small part because of the Jets’ ability to put their few miserable nights behind them and, as Arniel pointed out, the series is still 2-1 in Winnipeg’s favour. The Jets are also expected to get Dylan DeMelo back in time for Game 4, which seems more pressing having watched Winnipeg’s defencemen struggle badly in Game 3. (I wouldn’t be as confident that Gabriel Vilardi will play, given that Winnipeg’s next practice isn’t until Saturday and he hasn’t ditched his non-contact jersey as of yet.)

But the Jets are one more miserable game away from being tied in the series — and make no mistake, they’re very much mired in a series now. This is no rout and Winnipeg can’t afford to wait until the series is done to find the next level to its play. Morrissey told us after last year’s devastating playoff loss that the Jets had “levels that we need to find” in their quest to make a deep playoff run.

I asked him to reflect on those words now. Isn’t this mid-series gut-check moment about finding that next level now?

“We talked about it after the game. It’s a 2-1 series now. You lose that game in overtime, you lose that game how we did, it’s the same result,” he said. “Playoffs are all about learning lessons and improving as the series goes on, but also being able to turn the page. So we’ll look at the areas we need to improve … Our team’s done a great job all year of being resilient and bouncing back from games that aren’t us, so that’s our expectation over the next few days.”

That’s a productive place for Winnipeg to put its energy, even as Jets fans rally around the missed goal call on Thursday.

If all of those things bounced the Jets’ way on Thursday night in St. Louis, the story from Game 3 would still be that the Jets got smoked. I believe Morrissey when he says these Jets are resilient. Game 4 would be a brilliant time to prove it.