So, here are most of his statements, broken down. Even allowing for the fact that he’s certainly not a communications professional, I don’t have as positive a view on his statements as others. Part of that is the shitty writer. But I just don’t think he comes off well at all.
“At this point, I think the debt-to-society part is like 10 times more important than my hockey career,” he said. “Hockey would be a reward if I could ever have a second chance to have that back in my life, but I want to give back to the community.”
OK. So, what has he done?
Miller believes that he has taken several steps toward repaying his debt, beginning with when he apologized to Meyer-Crothers in the immediate aftermath of the incident. The apology was court-mandated, but it was a personal apology, and public records of Miller’s expulsion hearing and recommendation, obtained by azcoyotesinsider.com, show that the apology was read both to Meyer-Crothers, and to school officials and the school board. The apology was also sent to the Meyer-Crothers family.
So, for starters, a court ordered apology is, definitionally, not “in the immediate aftermath of the incident.” This seems to be the interested reporter carrying water for him, rather than puffery by Miller himself, but it’s nonsense.
Next, I mean, do we even give credit for a court-ordered apology? It’s not like he volunteered and did it on his own.
The court ruling prohibited Miller from having any further contact with Meyer-Crothers, and he said he abided by that ruling. More recently, when the new reports surfaced, he said he tried to add Isaiah as a friend on Snapchat, but “but I doubt he wants to add me back.”
OK. So, tried to add him on Snapchat.
“I obviously don’t know what he’s thinking in his head but I think it might be embarrassing for him. Maybe he is feeling down. Maybe he didn’t feel appreciated by his friends that were supposed to be there for him.”
This isn’t the only usage of the word “friends,”and it seems both completely incongruous as to the behavior at issue and the mother’s version of things. Yet Miller repeats the usage, such that it’s possibly a tell of coached behavior or self-interested narrative deflection that misrepresents both the scope of the bad conduct as well as the relationship between the two.
If he were to speak to Isaiah Meyer-Crothers again, here is what Miller said he would like to say.
“I would definitely apologize again; just tell him how sincere I am and how sorry I am that it affected his life,” he said. “If I could talk to him again I think we could be friends again. I wasn't allowed to talk to him, so I haven’t had the chance to apologize to him face-to-face, but I would like to catch up with him. We were good friends, so I’d like to see how he’s doing and what he’s been doing since eighth grade.
Again, “We we’re friends, and we could be friends again,” seems to badly misstate reality in which a Court gave you a stay away order and the kid’s mother says he’s emotionally traumatized and scarred. It’s possible that this is self-deception, but it feels worse than that.
“I kind of lost everything because of this, but it obviously affected their family way more.
Rhetorical primacy.
It affected them the most, but from my side, I have realized how much I lost, and it made me think about my life. I started seeing a counselor right after it all happened, and I still see a counselor when I go back home to figure out how to keep going and follow a dream. It goes both ways, but I think it helped me become a better person and become more mature.”
So, here’s how it affected him again. And he also sees a counselor now. So, we’re up to a court mandated apology and some counseling.
“Sitting with Mitchell, we told him, ‘Listen, this is not behavior that we will condone in our household, and you need to be a good person,’” Shelli Miller said. “These boys were always playing around,
So, yeah, it’s really difficult to see this as anything but clumsy narrative deflection/gaslighting. It’s not just Miller, here. It’s “these boys.” It’s “always
playing around.” We can make an allowance that the guy writing this is bad at what he does, but, if Miller’s and his mom’s quotes are accurate, they’re very likely practiced and intended to minimize the problem as an unfortunate incident between good friends.
but he was in trouble for a very long time after we found out everything. My husband and I are pretty strict, but he also did everything above and beyond what was asked of him after the fact, so I think something really good is going to come out of this for him.”
OK, so what was the “above and beyond”?
Since the incident for which Miller and another teenager were charged with assault and violating the Ohio Safe Schools Act in February 2016, he completed his court-mandated 25 hours of community service which included working with the physically disabled (including the Special Olympics) and children of multiple ethnicities.
Court ordered 25 hours of community service.
That’s like . . . three weeks of being a Little League coach. It’s less time than some posters here have spent complaining about the 2015 draft. And it’s court-ordered.
So, what else?
He has also worked with a pair of counselors during the past five years.
When he was in Iowa playing for Cedar Rapids of the USHL, his coach, Mark Carlson said Miller was part of the team’s community outreach program, which included feeding the homeless, working with the elderly and taking part in a program that was germane to Miller’s earlier incident.
“Mitchell was a good team member when he was here,” Carlson said. “We do a lot of community service as part of our player development program. Mitchell was very involved in all aspects of our community service. There were certainly guys that did as much, but he was right there with those guys. He did a lot of community service. The team did take part in an anti-bullying program and Mitchell was a part of that.”
OK. So his former coach notes that he participated in what at first blush seems a lot like the Bruins going and visiting Children’s Hospital, right? What was the scope and time commitment? I have to think that, if it were truly substantial, the specifics would have been noted by one of the many interested parties. Given that they weren’t, this feels a lot like, “He went along on our soup kitchen and nursing home and high school visits.”
While Miller was at the University of North Dakota, he said he was working with teammate Jasper Weatherby in hopes of becoming a part of the school’s diversity training. Weatherby is a member of North Dakota's Student-Athlete Inclusion and Diversity Group, and he is the National Collegiate Hockey Conference's player representative for college hockey's social issues task force.
So, I have this thing about kitchen sink argumentation: when you pile on shitty arguments, it calls into question the credibility of your whole narrative. So what we have here is Miller “working with” a teammate who has a certain impressive sounding credential for borrowing, in the hopes of doing something that he didn’t actually do, because we certainly would have been told if he did.
Most recently, Miller has been focusing on his school work
while still visiting his old coach in Tri-City (USHL), Anthony Noreen, with whom he skates on occasion. COVID has made it more challenging for him to engage in community service, but he said he hopes to continue the work.
Continue what work, exactly?
Miller said he was prepared for a second wave of stories after he was drafted, but only to a point. He had sent a letter to every NHL team explaining the incident (azcoyotesinsider.com also obtained that letter) and what he had done in its aftermath.
Anyone got this letter? Because I see:
1. Court mandated apology;
2. Court mandated community service;
3. Participation in team community service at a rate similar to others; and
4. Seeing counselors.
“North Dakota told me they wouldn't drop me no matter what, but obviously the school has to protect itself, and the NHL teams and organizations have to protect themselves,” Miller said.
“North Dakota lied to me and protected themselves instead. NHL teams are protecting themselves as well.”
“I can’t get mad about that stuff. Once I got drafted in Arizona I was prepared for something to happen. We talked about it in eighth grade, that it was going to come back up eventually.
It was just a dagger when it came out. It is obviously everyone’s dream to get drafted, so I guess I wasn't really prepared for all of what happened.”
Miller faces a difficult road back to hockey. Before the NHL Draft, Elite Prospects
reached out to several NHL sources and found that numerous teams had left Miller off their draft boards. Here is an excerpt from a piece written by J.D. Burke, the site’s editor, explaining why Miller was excluded: “
There is a commonly held view among everyone within this segment of the league that Miller’s camp hasn’t been forthright in addressing their off-the-ice concerns, and when they have, that Miller has not interviewed well.
So, I guess other people who interviewed him feel much the same way I do when I read this article written by someone who, admittedly, is doing Miller no favors.
Miller said that he embraced the idea of becoming a diversity spokesperson for the Coyotes when they first mentioned the idea after drafting him. He still hopes to play a similar role somewhere.
This article is super long on letting Miller try to take credit for stuff he never ended up doing.
“I hope to share my story with others of what happened to me and Isaiah, and I hope we can sit face to face and chat, maybe later in life,” he said. “From a hockey standpoint, I think I deserve a second chance to play again and I have learned from my mistakes, but it will definitely be a tough road. Even after eighth grade, it was tough going from there to play for different teams and explaining what I did and what I have learned.
Jesus, dude. Read the fucking room. Denial of agency (“what happened to me and Isaiah,”) and description of what he, Miller, had to suffer.
“They gave me second chances, all the way to college. I came to work every day for school and practice, and I tried to be a better person. I guess I got lucky after eighth grade to get those chances, but it has obviously gone back downhill from there. Hopefully, I do get another opportunity to make my way back up and make a positive story out of this.”
Obviously, I come at this stuff from a certain tradition and method and view it through a certain lens. But this really does not strike me as a good article for Miller.
Edit: And, apparently stuff happened as I was breaking this down. Viewing Newley’s statement charitably, it seems that the org was stupid/lazy/negligent enough to take Miller’s dishonest framing of the incident as accurate?!?
