Bruins general manager Don Sweeney acknowledged on Friday that some players had questions about the team’s decision to sign Mitchell Miller to an entry-level contract.
What were Bruins thinking with Mitchell Miller signing?
It turns out that one of those players was captain Patrice Bergeron. In an interview with Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Friday, Bergeron acknowledged that he was “on the fence” about the signing and had concerns that it went against the team’s culture.
“I was on the fence,” Bergeron said in a clip from the interview shared by Sportsnet. “I think as a person, but also as a team, I think we stand for integrity and inclusion and diversity, obviously. So, that was the first thing I guess that came out of my mouth, was that it goes against a little bit of what we are as a culture and as a team and for me as a person.”
“…I’ve been told lately that he’s working hard to make some changes, to hopefully make those bad decisions in the past help others to not do that,” Bergeron added. “And for me, I think the work is on him.”
In 2016, a then-14-year-old Miller and a classmate admitted in an Ohio juvenile court to bullying Isaiah Meyer-Crothers, a Black classmate with developmental disabilities. According to an investigation by The Arizona Republic, Miller repeatedly taunted Meyer-Crothers with racial slurs, hit him, and tricked Meyer-Crothers “into licking a candy push pop that Miller and another boy had wiped in a bathroom urinal.”
After the Arizona Coyotes drafted Miller in the fourth round in the 2020 NHL Draft, Meyer-Crothers told The Arizona Republic that Miller had never apologized to him in the four years since the court decision. The Coyotes faced widespread backlash after the pick and wound up renouncing Mitchell’s draft rights less than a month later. Miller was also dropped from the University of North Dakota hockey team after those details had come to light.
Miller and Sweeney both said on Friday that he has since apologized, but Meyer-Crothers’ mother told WBZ that the apology didn’t come until last week. She also clarified on Friday that it was not just one incident of Miller bullying her son, but rather something that went on for years.
The Bruins have faced significant backlash for their decision to sign Miller, and it has certainly put a damper on their historic start to the season. Bergeron probably won’t be the only player who’s asked about it, and he probably isn’t the only player who had questions of his own.
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