Maple Leafs are about to lose one of their prospects next week

The Toronto Maple Leafs are hopfully turning a page next season as they shed their one single year of being absolutely terrible in their current era, come away from it with Gavin McKenna, and return to at least some bit of respectability. All the while though, they might lose some talents along the way and the most recent potential player to leave the organization is somewhat staying close to home.

On August 15, over a dozen NHL prospects who are under a very specific set of circumstances could become unrestricted free agents and there is a Leafs prospect among them.

Players who just completed their fourth season of NCAA hockey could notify the NHL Central Registry that they are no longer students -- that they're not planning on returning to school in the fall -- and it would thereby remove them from the reserve list of the NHL team that drafted them. This would make them unrestricted free agents.

As we said, it's a very specific group of players who fall under these circumstances. And, the Leafs are affected.

Maple Leafs prospect set to hit free agency

Joe Miller just finished his fourth year at Harvard University. The 5-foot-10 forward was drafted by the Leafs in the sixth round of the 2020 NHL Draft and has decided that he's done with school and is about to turn pro, but the Leafs won't be signing him to his entry-level deal, making him an unrestricted free agent.

But there is an interesting wrinkle in the story: Miller has already signed somewhere for next season.

The 23-year-old signed a one-year contract with the Maple Leafs' ECHL affiliate Cincinnati Cyclones late last month. This is an ECHL-only deal.

Technically, Miller could have signed with any ECHL team but it is interesting that he has decided to somewhat stay within the organization without the Leafs giving him a contract. He will need to sign an AHL contract, or even an NHL contract for him to move up in the organization ladder to the Marlies (or the Leafs), but for now, Miller is going to be making his pro hockey debut for the Cyclones next season.

If a different NHL or AHL team wanted to sign Miller and bring him to the level above, they absolutely could. Now that the Leafs are set to lose his signing rights, they don't have control to keep him in the organization. Miller just so happened to voluntarily stay closer to the team that drafted him.

Is there a future for Miller in the Leafs organization?

There is such a thing for late-bloomers and for players who are leaving college in their early-20s to eventually become full-time NHLers, but it seems like there is a massive hill to climb for Miller.

Last season, he scored six goals and 12 points in 34 games for Harvard. That's not great. But, he did manage to finish with 23 points in 28 games for his junior year, and 27 in 32 for his sophomore season. Even in his freshman year, he scored 13 goals and 28 points in 33 games. Did something happen last summer that prevented him from keeping that same trajectory?

If he was leaving college after scoring over a point per game, then he might have earned himself an AHL contract with the Marlies, but his senior year really took a turn for the worse and he'll have to fight and scratch and claw his way up from Cincinnati.

It's not impossible, but Miller will need to impress fairly quickly.

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