Report: Bruins to Recall Kevan Miller

Peter Chiarelli said this after Kevan Miller was assigned to Providence upon reaching the ten-game threshold and therefore exposing him to waivers back on December 18th: "...proably the next time we bring [Kevan] up will be for good."

The Boston Bruins will reportedly recall Kevan Miller - probably for good - on Monday. Mark Divver of The Providence Journal reported that, while not official, we can probably expect Miller to be recalled to join Boston for good.

Not official, but expecting Miller to be recalled, on non-emergency basis. Likely tomorrow.

— Mark Divver (@MarkDivver) December 29, 2013

Further evidence of this impending roster move is the fact that Miller is a healthy scratch this afternoon in the Providence Bruins game against the Springfield Falcons.

After Miller's successful stint in his first ten NHL games, Chiarelli explained sending Miller back down to the AHL:

We don't wanna risk losing him to waivers. Ten games...once you play your tenth game, you're exposed to waivers...so we felt that Kevan would probably be waiver pick up by somebody, we didn't wanna risk it. So I spoke to Kevan beforehand and told him and he understood. I told him I felt good about his play up here and probably the next time we bring him up will be for good.

With Dennis Seidenberg out for the remainder of the season (DAMMIT), Miller is the obvious choice. It's time for him to bid farewell to the AHL, where in his two-plus seasons, he developed his game into the Bruins style of hockey that has made him NHL ready and the best candidate to fill in for Seidenberg.

Miller is from Los Angeles, California but came to New England for prep school hockey. He attended Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He made the varsity hockey team at Berkshire his senior year, and posted six goals and eight assists in 31 games.

Miller then went to college at the University of Vermont, where he was captain his senior year. In 144 games over four years, he had five goals, 25 assists, 30 points, a +5, and 97 penalty minutes. As captain, he worked to straighten out a team that was distracted by off-ice nonsense and wanted to restore a blue-collar hockey culture, which he spoke about in this article in October of 2010.

"A lot of that (inconsistency) was attributed to socially or with the lack of — not of team chemistry — guys doing the right thing...We had problems with guys getting in trouble, this and that. Guys were more worried about what we were going to do this week...because we got in trouble last week...We’ve taken a step forward, getting back to our culture we had my freshman year, my sophomore year. We are a blue-collar team; we’re going to work hard on and off the ice and we’re going to take care of each other in the weight room and socially as well."

After his senior year in 2011, Miller joined the Providence Bruins on an amateur tryout contract. He played six games with Providence and was subsequently invited to Bruins training camp to begin the 2011-12 season. Although he was sent to Providence, he earned a two-way, two-year entry level contract.

In the next two years with Providence, he didn't receive any recalls or draw much attention, but he warned himself an extension when he contract expired this past summer. The Bruins re-signed him to a one-year, one-way contract extension worth $550,000.

In a little over two seasons with Providence, Miller appeared in 153 games. He posted seven goals and 38 assists for 45 points, a +22, and 227 penalty minutes. In nine playoff games in the spring of 2013, Miller had five assists. Miller has had a strong AHL career, but if he is indeed recalled to Boston, I happily bid him farewell, and congratulations on a hard-earned promotion.

Here's to many more of these:

(GIF credit to @PeteBlackburn)