Do the Hurricanes really have ‘the loudest house’? Here’s Tuesday’s decibel count
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Lenovo Center crowd reached 110 decibels during Game 1 on Tuesday.
- The News & Observer recorded boos at 102 decibels before the game.
- The N&O previously reported 117 decibels at games and said it may have reached 130.
The sounds of a Carolina Hurricanes game are unmistakable — win or lose.
There are times the arena is quiet, and you can hear the clean smack of a puck on a stick, the zip of a skate on the ice. And there are times Lenovo Center explodes with noise: sirens sound, fans scream and chant, music blasts.
It’s loud — famously so.
Known in the league as “the loudest house,” a 2025 survey of NHL players revealed that Lenovo Center is home to the steepest home ice advantage in the league; a quarter of surveyed players said Lenovo is their least favorite place to play.
At Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday, the Hurricanes’ partisan crowd of nearly 19,000 lived up to its thunderous reputation.
We wanted to know just how loud it really was, so The News & Observer used its own device to measure the crowd noise in Game 1.
Before the game even began, boos for the Knights’ starting lineup reached 102 decibels. Then, the Canes got off to a lively start when Nikolaj Ehlers scored first — the third-fastest goal to start a National Hockey League championship series and, serendipitously, the fastest in any Stanley Cup Final game since the Hurricanes’ last trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006. The Lenovo Center jumbotron recorded 109 decibels.
But the loudest moment of the game by our measure came after the second goal, also scored by Ehlers, reaching 110 decibels. That made Ehlers the first player to score twice in the opening period of a Stanley Cup Final since 1989, and marked the fastest two goals by one player from the start of a Stanley Cup Final in more than 35 years.
And when Jordan Staal tied the game in the second period, the crowd reached that same number.
According to Yale Environmental Health and Safety, 110 decibels is similar to the volume of a chainsaw.
After the Canes fourth goal, scored by Shayne Gostisbehere, the crowd fell just short of its chainsaw high, reaching 109.
According to Guinness World Records, the loudest crowd roar at a sports stadium was achieved by the boisterous fans of the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 29, 2014 in a game against the New England Patriots. It measured 142.2 decibels.
Tuesday night’s game at the Lenovo Center was a far cry from the world record, but still certainly an earful. The News & Observer previously reported that the decibel count in the arena has reached 117 decibels, though it is believed the level has hit 130 decibels during past playoff games.
At one point, the jumbotron read out more than 113 decibels, but The N&O was unable to independently record that reading.
This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 2:16 PM.
