Carter Hart’s highly scrutinzed comeback has arrived at the Stanley Cup Final with Vegas

LAS VEGAS (AP) — No strangers to controversy, the Golden Knights know the spotlight is going to shine even brighter now that they are back in the Stanley Cup Final with a particular glare on goaltender Carter Hart.

Hart is a major reason Vegas is playing for the Cup for the third time in their nine years and going after their second championship in four seasons. The first three opponents in the NHL playoffs failed to solve him, and now it will be up to Carolina — 12-1 in the playoffs — to take one last whack at finding a way to get pucks past Hart when that series opens Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hart's very presence in the NHL generated discussions about whether he should even be allowed to suit up. He was one of five 2018 Canada world junior hockey players acquitted of sexual assault last July. The NHL ruled those players were eligible to sign deals beginning Oct. 15 and to play starting Dec. 1. Hart signed a two-year, $4 million contract with Vegas and hasn't looked back.

Hart has emerged as a credible Conn Smythe Trophy candidate for playoff MVP. His interviews the past couple of months have been limited but he is likely to face questions about the case before Game 1.

Golden Knights fans welcomed him from the beginning, clapping for him when he took the ice for the first time Dec. 2 against Chicago, some even bringing signs expressing their support. Those cheers have only grown during the club's Cup Final run; he receives among the loudest ovations when the starting lineup is introduced before home games.

“Everybody here has been so awesome,” Hart said after the Golden Knights swept Colorado in the Western Conference Final. “You see it every day with the fans. They show up at the rink and our practices. The support that we get is unbelievable. They're just so excited about the Vegas Golden Knights, and I'm so blessed to be here.”

Vegas might have been the perfect spot for Hart to land.

It's a franchise that isn't afraid to aggressively do what it can to win. Vegas also has a veteran locker room, and even more beneficial for Hart is that he is playing for a coach who knows him and strongly defends him as a person and a goalie. John Tortorella coached Hart in Philadelphia and was convinced the Flyers were turning into real contenders in the 2023-24 season when the league suspended the goalie along with the other four players involved in the scandal.

So when the Golden Knights fired Bruce Cassidy with eight games left and replaced him with Tortorella, Hart knew he had an ally behind the bench.

“I think he’s a strong kid mentally," Tortorella said. "I certainly watched him when he came into the organization and played in his first couple of games, and I watched him play in an overtime game where he played really well. He’s dialed in ... He was growing tremendously in Philly until he had to step out of the league, and he’s right back at it.”

Cassidy had started Adin Hill, who backstopped the Golden Knights' 2023 Cup championship, down the stretch. One of Tortorella's first moves was to put Hart in net.

“I loved playing for him in Philly,” Hart said. “Super happy he's here.”

The fact Hart is in Vegas was far from a sure thing last summer.

He was one of the junior players charged in 2024 in connection with an incident in London, Ontario, that occurred six years earlier. The judge overseeing the trial said the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof to convict the players and that the allegations lacked the credibility to justify the charges.

The NHL conducted its own investigation in 2022, and after the players were cleared of legal responsibility, the league announced they would be reinstated. With the league calling the players' actions “deeply troubling and unacceptable,” there wasn't a rush by clubs to start signing them.

The Hurricanes considered signing Hart and Michael McLeod, but ultimately decided to pass. Vegas had a different answer for Hart, agreeing to bring him aboard and later issued a statement about being “committed to the core values that have defined our organization from its inception.”

Hart read his own statement to reporters back then, saying he wanted “to show the community my true character and who I am and what I’m about.”

The return to action wasn't quite what Hart envisioned.

He went 5-3-3 with a 3.23 goals-against average and .874 save percentage, and that wasn't even the worst of it. Hart suffered a lower-body injury during a Jan. 8 game against Columbus, taking him out of the lineup for nearly three months.

Vegas' goaltending was, at best, inconsistent with Hill and Akira Schmid more or less sharing duties. Even with Hart expected to come back late in the season, there was little indication the Golden Knights would be able to rely on their goalies.

Tortorella saw something different, starting Hart in six of the final eight games. Hart went 6-0 with a 1.67 GAA and .930 save percentage.

Suddenly, there was no doubt who was the starting goalie.

“He (spends) a long day at the rink with his preparation and making sure he’s dialied (in),” defenseman Shea Theodore said. “It’s just fun to watch.”

Hart has carried that strong play into the postseason.

He is 12-4 with a 2.22 GAA and a .924 save percentage. He has won six starts in a row, including a sweep of Colorado against a team that led the league with 3.63 goals per game but was held to 1.75 by Hart and the Golden Knights defense.

“I think he's just been getting more and more confident each game, each round he's played,” forward Brett Howden said. “There's a lot of momentum in these rounds of games. Obviously, it's going to go back and forth. I feel like he does an unbelievable job of keeping us in the game. He'll bail us out if we need to be bailed out.”

The challenge doesn't get any easier, going against a Carolina team that outshot Montreal 139-67 over the final four games in the Eastern Conference Final. Hurricanes goalie Frederik Andersen has been stellar in the net this postseason, with a 1.41 GAA and .931 save percentage.

Should the Hurricanes win the Cup, Andersen likely will be the one skating off with the Conn Smythe.

Hart understands the challenge.

“I have a lot of work to do,” Hart said. “We've just got to prepare for the next game. We'll be ready for Game 1.”

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Vegas Golden Knights center Brett Howden, left, and goaltender Carter Hart congratulate each other after the Golden Knights defeated the against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series Sunday, May 24, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart (79) waits for play to begin before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A novel pill helped people with advanced pancreatic cancer live longer, researchers reported Sunday, raising hopes of long-needed better treatments for one of the deadliest types of cancer.

“While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study.

The drug is called daraxonrasib and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases — a target that had eluded treatment for decades.

The daily pills nearly doubled survival time, with fewer severe side effects, in a study that randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic, or spreading, cancer had quit responding to prior treatment. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.

Those taking daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.

“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying" when first seeing the study results, Dr. Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, who wasn't involved with the research, said from the ASCO meeting. She was struck by how “patients stayed on this treatment because it was providing durable and meaningful benefit to them.”

The pills’ effects eventually wane but recipients used them for significantly longer than the comparison group stayed on chemotherapy, reporting less pain and a better quality of life as their tumors shrank. Many still were using the drug after the data was analyzed, which Wainberg said means the survival gap may widen as researchers continue tracking them.

Dr. Brian Wolpin, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, presented the findings Sunday. He said the drug should become “a new standard of care” for previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer, adding that researchers also will explore its use earlier in the disease, including to see if tumor shrinkage might let more patients qualify for surgery.

Side effects most likely to affect pill usage were a rash that can be severe and mouth sores, he said.

Maker Revolution Medicines funded the study and the Food and Drug Administration plans to expedite review of the drug. Meanwhile, the agency is allowing what’s called “expanded access” to the experimental drug for patients who meet certain criteria. The drug garnered public attention when former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse described on “60 Minutes” how he's had less pain while taking it. Oncologists are being flooded with requests as the special access program gets started.

Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms in large part because it’s hard to detect before it starts spreading to other organs. The American Cancer Society estimates about 67,000 new cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year and more than 52,000 people will die from the disease. The five-year overall survival rate is 13%.

Unlike with other cancers that have benefitted from a variety of chemotherapy alternatives, pancreatic cancer has been harder to tackle.

Cancer specialists not involved in the new research expressed optimism that this may be a turning point in the quest for new options, with dozens of experimental drugs in development.

The new drug targets mutations in the RAS gene family that normally regulates cell growth. So-called KRAS mutations are especially critical in fueling pancreatic cancer. But a structure that made it hard for drugs to stick to the mutated proteins meant this cancer driver was long considered “undruggable.”

Revolution Medicines’ drug uses what’s essentially a molecular glue to bind with multiple KRAS subtypes. Wainberg said researchers next will probe whether the drug worked better in certain of those subtypes.

The drug will change pancreatic cancer treatment, said Dr. Andrew Coveler of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“This thing works drastically differently,” he said.

Wainberg said other drugs in development target specific KRAS subtypes. Other approaches in earlier stages of testing include vaccines designed to prevent recurrence after pancreatic cancer surgery by teaching the immune system to recognize the mutated protein.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - This undated microscope image from USC via the NIH shows pancreatic cancer cells, nuclei in blue, growing as a sphere encased in membranes, red. (Min Yu/Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, File)