The Bruins brand has taken a Terry O’Reilly-sized hit. Most disturbing was how the Bruins seemingly intentionally downplayed or ignored the racial element of the bullying that Miller engaged in with a developmentally disabled Black classmate, Isaiah Meyer-Crothers.
Willful ignorance, total lack of due diligence, or an astonishing combination of both.
A big, bad mistake — that sums up the Bruins’ attempt to bring in disgraced defenseman Mitchell Miller. How could such an egregious error in judgment happen?
Conspicuously, there was no mention of the racial component of Miller’s behavior in the original team statement Friday announcing the signing. General manager Don Sweeney referenced it only when Globe columnist Tara Sullivan asked about it 17 minutes into his Zoom presser.
Advertisement
On Wednesday, Meyer-Crothers released a statement through the Hockey Diversity Alliance that makes the Bruins look even worse. He said that Miller called him the n-word and spit in his face during their time in school together. Meyer-Crothers said that Miller forced him to say he was “his [n-word]” to sit at his lunch table and had food thrown in his face by Miller. He claimed he was called the n-word every day.
Get Sports Headlines The Globe’s most recent sports headlines delivered to your inbox every morning. Enter Email Sign Up
That’s a far cry from the one-time-mistake narrative the Bruins tried to push involving a Push Pop placed in a urinal.
How could the organization that had the NHL’s first Black player, Willie O’Ree, and celebrated his impact on the game by retiring his number in January look so callous and clueless?
Bullying is awful. Bullying someone with developmental hurdles is contemptible. Bullying someone like that while subjecting them to racial epithets is reprehensible. This was a hat trick of horrible the Bruins should’ve steered clear of. The 20-year-old Miller isn’t just an offensive defenseman. He’s an offensive one.
Instead, the Bruins did what a lot of folks do when they want to justify something questionable. They reached a conclusion first — Miller was suitable to sign — and then worked to reverse-engineer the logic.
Advertisement
As it so often does, such logic collapsed under any real scrutiny. Buckling to public pressure and outcry from their fans and classy players, the Bruins aborted the signing Sunday.
Even if Miller’s side of the story is accurate, it was completely irresponsible for the Bruins not to contact Meyer-Crothers or his family, a fact acknowledged by club president Cam Neely in the team’s mea culpa press conference Monday.
The Bruins could’ve checked with the Hockey Diversity Alliance to get its take on signing Miller. Instead, they were ready to just send Miller to Providence, where he would play with forward J.D. Greenway, who is Black and whose brother Jordan became the first Black player to make a men’s US Olympic hockey team.
That’s tone-deaf to the max, especially for a club that has admirably promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion.
That just feels like lip service in a league where a recent NHL study revealed that 84 percent of the employees, including more than 90 percent of the players, are white. The issue looks like one of perception, not personal investment.
Perhaps that’s why the Bruins engaged in deception by omission when it came to the racial nature of why Miller, who had his draft rights renounced by the Arizona Coyotes in 2020, is a pucks pariah.
Where was Bruins ownership? Did it sign off on the signing?
Advertisement
Neely said, “Ownership was made aware, but certainly it was a hockey ops decision.”
On the Cam & Strick podcast, Miller’s agent, Eustace King, who is Black, disputed the characterizations of his client. But he outlined Bruins ownership’s involvement.
“You had ownership pass by and have a conversation and ask their own questions,” said King.
The real answer on where Bruins ownership was is the usual one: blissfully absent. CEO Charlie Jacobs, steward of the asset owned by his father Jeremy, is physically present but still acts like an absentee owner sometimes.
The Jacobses were all too content to send Neely out as a hockey human shield.
I asked some questions of the Bruins via email:
▪ Why was there no mention of the racial component of the bullying in the initial team statement? Was the team simply unaware of those facts from the Arizona Republic story dating back to when Miller was drafted by the Coyotes?
▪ Did the Bruins employ a private investigator to vet Miller and his side of the story before he was signed? Were the Bruins able to obtain and review the court records related to the incident? Was any attempt made to obtain those records?
The response I got was a statement from a team spokesman: “You have already heard from our management and received our statements on this matter. We are now focusing on the steps we need to take to move forward.”
Advertisement
The real answer appears to be that, given their player development troubles under Sweeney, the Bruins were all too willing to accept Miller’s version of events. Now, the reputational damage of reaching for Miller and downplaying his racial animus is much worse than flak for a barren farm system.
King said he wanted to provide the legwork for any team interested in Miller. Of course, that’s a giant conflict of interest.
“Instead of them doing the homework, I wanted to do the homework for the team,” King said. ” I also want to do the homework for the league because the only thing you have out there is public record from interviews and things that happened from the Arizona incident.”
The Bruins probably believed they could help rehabilitate Miller, and he could help them. But the latter part of that equation blinded them.
Before all of this transpired, I planned an apology-to-Sweeney column. New coach Jim Montgomery is the fresh voice that the players needed, as evidenced by their scorching start. On a possibly not unrelated note, Sweeney coaxed back centers Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci, lifting the Bruins back to serious contention.
Instead, the Bruins are dealing with a self-inflicted disgrace, a black mark the Black and Gold won’t soon be able to shed
Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at christopher.gasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.