Ice hockey player Carter Hart to join Golden Knights after sexual assault acquittal

Ice hockey player Carter Hart – one of five players acquitted of sexual assault charges in Canada – has signed a new contract with National Hockey League (NHL) team the Vegas Golden Knights.

The players – all members of Canada’s gold medal-winning team at the World Junior Championship – were accused of assaulting a woman known as EM in a hotel room in 2018 in the Canadian province of Ontario. They were released in July.

The NHL is made up of 32 teams in North America – 25 in the United States and seven in Canada.

Hart is the first to sign a contract with an NHL team since ruling that acquitted players cannot rejoin teams until Oct. 15, nor play games until December as part of a reinstatement process.

Speaking at a press conference, the 27-year-old said he was “excited to move forward”.

“It’s been a long road to get back to this point, to start playing hockey again, a game that I love, and I’ve been away for a year and a half now,” Hart said, adding that he’s “learned a lot.”

The Golden Knights said in a statement on

Michael McLeod, one of the other players acquitted in the case, signed a three-year contract last week with Avangard Omsk of the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia, the NHL reported. The other three remain free agents.

Hart, McLeod and fellow ice hockey players Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton and Cal Foote were all found not guilty of sexually assaulting EM following an eight-week trial that attracted much attention in Canada. Hart was the only player to testify in his own defense.

In her decision, the judge said she did not find EM’s testimony “credible or reliable” and that “the Crown could not meet its burden of proof on any of the counts.”

The central question in the trial was whether EM, who was 20 at the time of the incident, consented to all the sexual acts in the hotel room that night. The team was attending a Hockey Canada gala.

The court heard the woman met the players at a bar and then returned to the hotel room to have consensual sex with Mr McLeod. Other players then entered the room and engaged in other sexual acts with her.

The players’ lawyers claimed she asked the men to have sex with her and they believed she had given consent.

EM, however, said she was drunk and afraid of men. Although she initially agreed to have sex with Mr. McLeod, she testified that she did not agree with what happened afterward.

Before the trial, the case forced a reckoning within Hockey Canada – widely seen as Canada’s voice for ice hockey on the international stage – after it emerged the sporting body had reached a quiet settlement with the alleged victim in 2022 and had set aside a fund to settle similar allegations.

Hockey Canada lost major sponsors, faced a parliamentary inquiry and subsequently had its federal funding frozen. He then announced a plan to address “systemic issues” in ice hockey culture.

In a statement released in September, the NHL said: “The events that occurred following the 2018 Hockey Canada Foundation Gala in London, Ontario, prior to these players’ arrival to the NHL, were deeply disturbing and unacceptable.

“The League expects everyone connected with the game to conduct themselves with the highest level of moral integrity. And, in this matter, although it was not deemed criminal, the conduct of the players involved certainly did not meet that standard.”