With Mitchell Miller, the Boston Bruins have embarrassed themselves – and insulted our intelligence

Congratulations, Boston Bruins. In the span of three days, you put on an absolute clinic in how not to conduct yourselves as an organization.

And ‘organization’ doesn’t feel like the appropriate noun to describe a franchise that has been utterly disorganized in its complete bungling of the Mitchell Miller signing, from start to finish, seemingly every separate arm of the team operating independently of the other.

On Friday, hours after the Bruins announced the entry-level deal for Miller, GM Don Sweeney admitted, “I can’t categorically say this was the right decision.” Miller had been dropped by the team that drafted him in 2020, the Arizona Coyotes, in light of revelations that he and another student had repeatedly abused Isaiah Meyer-Crothers, an intellectually disabled Black student, and were charged with assault and a violation of the Ohio Safe Schools Act at the age of 14. Miller and the other student repeatedly used racial slurs and forced Meyer-Crothers to lick a lollipop that had been wiped against a bathroom urinal.

And Friday, after the Bruins decided to give Miller another chance, Sweeney admitted the team hadn’t reached out to the Crothers family.

You know who did? Reporters. And Crothers’ mother, Joni Meyer-Crothers, gladly came forward to offer that Miller’s lone attempt at an apology came last week, once the Bruins were well down the path of signing him, in the form of a Snapchat message after he’d subjected her son to “years and years of torture.” Seems like it would’ve been a smart idea to do some additional homework on the situation rather than simply taking Miller’s word that he had “apologized to the individual,” and “have come to better understand the far-reaching consequences of my actions,” as he said in a statement he released Friday.

And the Bruins’ brilliant decision came one day before they were slated to travel to, of all places, the media hotbed of Toronto, which would expose their players to barrages of questions about the ethical implications of signing Miller. In a pre-taped interview with Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, captain Patrice Bergeron said he was “on the fence” about the decision and felt what Miller had done contradicted the culture the team was trying to build. Fellow team leader Brad Marchand? “We have a culture in this organization, in this room, we obviously don’t condone what happened and that will never be a part of our team and our organization.” Nick Foligno, a former longtime NHL captain with a history of charity work? “It’s hard for us to swallow.”

Also dropping Saturday: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s claim that the Bruins did not inform the league of the decision to sign Miller, that Miller had not been deemed eligible to play in the NHL and that there was no guarantee that he ever would be.

Keeping score so far? The Bruins entered the weekend as one of the league’s biggest success stories, owning an NHL-best 10-1-0 record. They signed a young man who, at best, had a concerning track record of sustained abusive and racist behavior as a teenager (a) despite their own GM expressing he didn’t know if it was the right decision, (b) despite their own captain and other prominent veterans expressing their public discomfort with the idea, (c) without reaching out to the victim’s family and (d) without notifying the NHL about the idea.

Oh, but now, we are expected to believe the Bruins statement, issued by president Cam Neely on Sunday night, claiming that “new information” led to their decision to rescind the contract and that they had believed Mitchell’s past bullying was an isolated incident.

The Bruins are insulting our collective intelligence with such a statement. Miller’s story was very public, it was two years old, and it had previously been established that the abuse took place over a multi-year period. The only real “new information” the Bruins were reacting to was the news that they had embarrassed themselves as a franchise and dredged up some traumatic memories for the Crothers family. They’d have more credibility if they admitted, “this is a terrible look for us and we’d like a mulligan.” At least that would be honest.

Instead, an unforced error has stained one of the league’s Original Six franchises.

The signing on Friday, just like the Miller draft pick in 2020, incited plenty of debate over the idea of penance. When is an athlete deserving of a second chance? Is playing in the NHL a right or a privilege for someone talented enough to make it? But regardless of where you land on that debate: the Bruins’ sin was their ignorance in not understanding how fresh the wound was, how much work Miller clearly still has to do to show he’s learned from his mistakes. Note the plurality there: mistakes. Not mistake. It was no isolated incident. It requires a specific type of malevolence to terrorize another human being over a long-term period. Yet the Bruins felt it was safe to treat Miller’s situation as the equivalent of, “Boys will be boys at 14.” In doing so, they empowered the bullies, sent a message that things will blow over in a couple years if you lay low and have enough talent. How about doing something to empower the victim instead?

Too late. The Bruins stepped in a big pile of manure, and the stench won’t wash out any time soon. Their reaction reeks more of self preservation than genuine remorse. And that includes Neely stating on Monday, “I want to apologize to Isaiah and his family. It’s something that they shouldn’t continue to go through.”

If the organization, top to bottom, was so lacking in cohesion every step of the way, who was responsible for the signing in the first place? Why was a visibly hesitant Sweeney made to make the announcement on Friday, but Neely tasked with walking it back on Sunday? How did Neely not know that no one from the organization had contacted the Crothers family, as he claimed during Monday’s media availability? Plenty of questions have been asked already about Miller, whether he’s showing genuine signs of rehabilitating his behavior. But it’s time we also asked questions about the Bruins’ lack of leadership, too.