Suddenly, Miller on biggest stage

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Drew Miller has a victory in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Now all the former Michigan State captain needs is a locker.

What he has now is a red chair, in between stalls in the suddenly jammed Ducks locker room.

On Tuesday, Miller, didn't even get to use that.

Camera crews from two nations kept asking him to stand up and say exactly how all this feels, how one goes from the Portland Pirates of the American Hockey League to a place on the top line of the Ducks without the benefit of one regular-season minute in the National Hockey League.

It's difficult to describe something that's beyond description.

"It's not something I anticipated," said Miller, 23, who grew up in East Lansing and played for the Spartans for three seasons before signing with the Ducks in April, 2006.

"But that's what I've been doing all along, preparing to play on this level."

Right place, right time

But you don't need 10 years in the league to know that if Wade Redden has the puck against the boards, you should separate him from it, as Miller did in the first period, leading to Andy McDonald's tying goal.

You don't need an atlas to find a vacuum.

In this case it was Chris Kunitz's vacated spot on the wing. Todd Marchant had been playing there, with Teemu Selanne and McDonald, but Marchant is a center, and the Ducks needed him to connect the fourth line.

What they needed was somebody smart and unselfish. They didn't ask Miller to be Kunitz, an All-American at Ferris State. Didn't have to. Miller checked Redden the way Kunitz would.

Ducks coach Randy Carlyle has been intrigued with Miller anyway, frequently praising his "hockey sense" and predicting a nice future. We all thought he meant 2008. Not Monday night.

Miller was back in the lineup on Wednesday as the Ducks won 1-0 to take a 2-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Family on ice

We also thought the Miller in these finals might be Ryan, the goalie for the Buffalo Sabres. Instead Ryan, Drew's older brother, was in the seats, and so was his father, Dean, and mother, Teresa.

Back home, seven others with Miller blood were watching.

The Millers of East Lansing are the college hockey equivalent of the Sutters. Drew is the fifth to play in the NHL. Ten of them played for MSU.

Drew's second cousins Kelly, Kevin and Kip put in a combined 2,126 NHL games. Kip was a Hobey Baker Award winner in 1990 for the Spartans, and Kevin played on the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.

Kip spent half the 2000 season with the Ducks. At 38, he was in seven playoff games for the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins this year.

On Monday night he was putting his kids to bed, with the Ducks-Ottawa game on TV in the background.

"I hear them saying, 'There goes Miller, into the corner,' and I'm thinking, 'Wonder who that is?' I had no idea it was Drew," Kip said Tuesday. "I didn't know he was in the lineup."

Kelly, who played in the Stanley Cup Finals with the Washington Capitals in 1998, was a Ducks assistant coach for Guy Charron.

The "K" boys are the sons of Lyle, who ran the Lansing Ice Arena. Ryan and Drew are the sons of Dean, who played for the Spartans in the late '70's.

Two other cousins, Taylor and Curtis Gemmel, played in the late 90's.

And it all started with Butch, who came to MSU from Regina, Sask. in the mid-1950s. Lyle was his younger brother, Dean his son.

"I was filling in water bottles for my cousins when I was really young," Drew said. "I'd go in the locker room and steal tape and eat their pizza. I was skating about as soon as I was walking. Ryan is about four years older than me, so I'd tag along after him."

"The joke at Michigan State was that Drew was a 10th-year freshman," Dean has said.

Late bloomer

But Drew was not assured of playing beyond college.

"He was under the radar," said David McNab, the Ducks assistant general manager. "He scored four goals his freshman year. People didn't think much of it. But he was the defensive player of the year in his conference."

Drew became an offensive force as a sophomore (17-16-33) and junior (18-25-43), while not giving up anything defensively.

Despite being captain and very close to his teammates, Miller felt the time was right to start his pro career with the Ducks, who drafted him in the sixth round of the 2003 draft.

So he gave up his senior year to turn pro and spent this season with Portland, where he developed well. He had 16 goals and 36 points in 79 games.

"I think he was overlooked," Kip said. "He has an edge to him. He's very responsible, and he knows how to play. And he was always playing. If you're in this family, you're playing hockey before you know what hit you."

Drew, who's 6-foot-2 and 170 pounds, was called up to the Ducks after the AHL Pirates missed the playoffs with no guarantee of playing. But he made his NHL debut in Game 5 of Anaheim's first-round series-clinching victory over Minnesota. He played three shifts and 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

Dean and Teresa regularly had the Spartans over for barbecues, picked up injured players from the hospital, and served as surrogate parents although they had to tone down those hospitality functions when Ryan was out of school and before Drew enrolled, because the NCAA had deemed them "boosters."

Off the ice

If Miller turns this into a Duck career, he knows other ways to assist a franchise.

At Michigan State he created a Spartan Buddy program that lined up athletes to visit terminally ill children.

Dean suffered a heart attack three years ago, so Drew contributed one of his Portland jerseys to the Southern Maine Heart Walk.

"My dad and grandma both had those problems," Drew said. "But he's fine now. He's back out on the ice again."

That's the Millers. Locker, shelf, resume and portfolio are optional. Ice is all that's required.

State Journal reporter Neil Koepke contributed to this report.