B’s lose Colin Miller
McQuaid stays put after expansion draft
LAS VEGAS — With every team destined to lose one player in last night’s expansion draft at T-Mobile Arena, you knew it was going to hurt everyone just a little bit.
How much the Bruins’ loss will hurt is up for debate.
The Vegas Golden Knights selected defenseman Colin Miller with one of their 30 picks.
Since the protected/unprotected lists were released last weekend, it seemed like the two most likely candidates to be picked from the Bruins were Miller and Adam McQuaid. It turns out the Knights went with the younger, cheaper, more mobile Miller over the bigger, nastier, stay-at-home McQuaid.
The thought here was that the 30-year-old McQuaid would have given the expansion team some toughness on the back end and a quiet leader off the ice, but the Knights chose to go with the new, puck-moving model, if not for themselves then possibly for another team.
The Knights will save a bit on money, at least in the short term. McQuaid will make $2.75 million in each of the next two years while Miller will make $1.1 million in 2017-18 before he becomes a restricted free agent with arbitration rights.
“The Boston Bruins want to thank Colin for his time and contributions to our organization. We wish Colin well as he begins an exciting new chapter,” B’s general manager Don Sweeney said in a statement.
While he made some strides in 2016-17 and is something of a darling of the analytics community, the 24-year-old Miller, who struggled with decision-making at times, could not solidify a spot in the lineup. And for all his offensive upside, he had the same number of points last year in three more games than Kevan Miller. Colin Miller had 6-7-13 totals in 61 games while Kevan Miller had 3-10-13 in 58 games.
Still, it smarts for the B’s to lose Colin Miller, who was part of the Milan Lucic deal with the Los Angeles Kings. That deal, in conjunction with the Dougie Hamilton trade at the 2015 draft set the B’s on their rebuild-on-the-fly course. He skates well and has a booming (though not always accurate) shot. The right-shot defenseman has also demonstrated an ability to play both the left and right side, which Kevan Miller has also done, albeit a little less effectively. His best hockey, presumably, is ahead of him.
There’s no telling whether Colin Miller will remain a Golden Knight, however. Vegas GM George McPhee said on Tuesday that he planned to wheel and deal from a surplus of defensemen. There is expected to be a flurry of trade announcements when the league-wide freeze is lifted today. There has been some speculation that he could be flipped to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“It’s bittersweet, to be honest,” said B’s center Patrice Bergeron. “You hate to see anyone leave. I thought Colin was getting better from one year to another. He’s 24 years old, he’s young, he’s got tremendous upside. It’s going to be tough to see him go.
“With Adam, it’s the friendships you create with the guys. I won a Stanley Cup with him, so it would have been tough to see him go for sure. But again, it’s bittersweet because whoever is leaving, it’s going to be tough. It’s going to sting.”
The question is where does McQuaid fit? While there’s an old hockey adage that states “you can never have too many defenseman,” this leaves the Bruins with four right-shot defensemen, all of whom belong in an NHL lineup. The easiest way to do that would be to put Kevan Miller on the left, though he is a better player on his natural side.
If that was the plan, the B’s could keep their top pair of Zdeno Chara and Brandon Carlo, have a second pair of Kevan Miller and Charlie McAvoy and keep the longtime third pair of Torey Krug and McQuaid together.
Then again, the B’s were thought to have been in the market for another veteran defenseman and the league now shifts to Chicago for this weekend’s draft, where many big transactions have occurred in recent years. There could very well be another shoe to drop.