It is a very difficult thing in the monolithic Hockey Culture to do something that basically everyone hates, so full credit to Don Sweeney for the least-popular signing in recent memory.

When the Boston Bruins announced Friday around noon that they'd signed Mitchell Miller, it felt about eight or 10 hours early for a classic news dump you hope people won't notice, and people reacted about how you'd expect. Fans hated it, media hated it, apparently the players hated it, and seemingly the league did as well. You knew someone was eventually going to sign him, but you would have maybe thought that a team without a rabid press corps and a sanctimonious attitude about how good their “Culture” is would take a pass on this player in particular.

The thought process, cited by Sweeney in a disastrous p