The Arizona Coyotes renounced the rights to Mitchell Miller, their first draft pick of this month's NHL Draft, on Thursday.
The selection of Miller, 18 years old and now playing hockey at the University of North Dakota, was widely criticized after an Arizona Republic report published Monday detailed Miller's bullying and racist taunting of a Black youth, Isaiah Meyer-Crothers, when the two were 14 years old in Ohio.
The club issued an apology to the Meyer-Crothers family.
"We have decided to renounce the rights to Mitchell Miller, effective immediately," Coyotes president & CEO Xavier Gutierrez said in a statement from the team Thursday morning.