Within two days of the Bruins signing Mitchell Miller, team president Cam Neely became convinced they needed to cut ties with the 20-year-old defenseman who has an ugly history of bullying and racism in his past.
Why it happened in the first place and what happens next are questions Neely says he is still working through.
Reacting to Cam Neely's press conference about Mitchell Miller
In a statement released by the team on Sunday night, Neely said that the decision to cut ties with Miller was made “based on new information” that had come to light over the weekend. In a press conference at Warrior Ice Arena on Monday morning, Neely was asked what that new information was.
“The fact that we didn’t talk to the family was concerning,” Neely said.
General manager Don Sweeney had acknowledged on Friday that he didn’t talk to Isaiah Meyer-Crothers (Miller’s victim) or his family. In explaining why, Sweeney said the Bruins didn’t feel the need to hear from their side beyond what had already been made public in the past.
“We don’t feel there’s necessarily forgiveness involved in this,” Sweeney said. “We feel there’s an opportunity for a young man to have a career despite a very misguided and immature decision back when he was in the eighth grade. So I don’t feel it was necessary at this point in time to hear both sides of the story. Albeit, I think we take Isaiah’s side that this event happened and the culpability lies 100 percent with Mitchell, and he needs to live with that and work the rest of his life to have a better understanding of what it means to respect people and live it.”
Joni Meyer-Crothers, Isaiah’s mother, has said in multiple interviews since the signing that she would have been willing to talk to the Bruins, and that Miller had not apologized to her son until just a week before his signing with Boston was announced.
Neely was asked why the team didn’t reach out to the Meyer-Crothers family.
“That’s a great question. Something I need to find out,” he said.
Neely said he has still not talked to the Meyer-Crothers family, but that he is planning to.
He added that not talking to them was “absolutely” a failure with the vetting process. As for his own role in that process, Neely said he was made aware that the hockey operations department was considering Miller in August and that he told them they needed to make sure they vetted the situation “properly.”
“I made it clear that we had to vet this out properly,” Neely said. “When it first came to my attention in August, I said, ‘We have to vet this out properly.’ This is something that’s a massive decision for the organization to make.”
Asked if he assumed his hockey operations team had done that, Neely said, “I shouldn’t assume anything.”
Naturally, Neely was then asked if there could or will be any internal discipline for those who were responsible for the flawed vetting process.
“That’s something I have to deal with today and this week and see where it takes me,” he said. “…I’ve got more work to do.”
As of Monday morning, the Bruins have not announced any moves or discipline beyond cutting ties with Mitchell. Sweeney does not have any media availability scheduled as of Monday morning.
Neely said this has “absolutely” been his biggest regret in his 12 years as team president and apologized to the fanbase, which flooded the organization with overwhelming blowback throughout the weekend.
“I want to apologize on behalf of the Boston Bruins organization,” he said. “It was a decision that we didn’t take lightly. I felt based on everything that I knew that he deserved a second chance. … We like to take pride in what we do in the community and how we hold ourselves accountable. We dropped the ball, and I’m here to apologize for that.”
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