Fans at the Lenovo Center directed chants of “no means no” at Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart about seven minutes into the first period of Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final on Thursday night, the second consecutive Final game in which the chants drew attention.
The chants began while the puck was in Carolina’s zone and far from Hart’s crease, and they were loud enough to be heard on the Sportsnet broadcast. In Game 1, fans had repeatedly chanted the same phrase when Hart played the puck.
The moment carried extra weight because of Hart’s recent legal history: he was one of five players from Canada’s 2018 World Juniors team acquitted on sexual assault charges by the Ontario Superior Court on July 24, 2025. The five players — Hart, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé and Cal Foote — had been charged in connection with an alleged June 2018 incident involving a woman identified publicly as E.M., whose identity remains protected by a publication ban.
League and team actions since the court decision have been part of the public record: the NHL initially charged the players and ruled them ineligible in January 2024, and after the acquittal the NHL said the conduct was “deeply troubling and unacceptable” and suspended all five despite the verdict.
On the ice, Hart has been the Golden Knights’ playoff workhorse. He started all 18 of Vegas’ postseason games, winning 13, and entered Game 2 with a.923 save percentage; he stopped 25 of 29 shots in Vegas’ 5-4 Game 1 win.
Hart addressed questions about his off-ice growth at a media availability on Monday when asked what he meant in October about learning and growing since the verdict. “I’ve learned a lot,” he said. “I’ve grown a lot since then. And I’ve been able to meet a lot of good people in the community, and I think the Vegas Golden Knights Foundation has done a really good job of making it easy for me to integrate into the community and meet a lot of cool people and — just really fortunate to be here in Vegas.”
A member of the Golden Knights’ communications team ended Hart’s availability immediately after that answer; Hart had spoken for approximately six minutes of a scheduled 15-minute block.
The friction is straightforward: Hart was legally cleared by the Ontario Superior Court, and yet fans have persisted in using the chant as a public rebuke during the highest-profile games of the season. That dissonance — a verdict on one hand and audible public condemnation in packed arenas on the other — follows the players’ suspension by the NHL despite acquittal.
The immediate question left open by Thursday’s chants is operational and institutional: will the NHL, the Golden Knights or the Lenovo Center take steps to curb the chants in the remaining games of the Stanley Cup Final, and if so what form those steps will take? The chants have now appeared in multiple Final games, and their recurrence raises a choice for league and venue officials between enforcement, tolerance or some intermediate response.
How that choice plays out will shape the rest of this Final: it will determine whether the chants remain a recurring disruption audible on broadcasts, a muted background to the on-ice contest, or a flashpoint that prompts firmer league or arena action.
