By Matt Kalman, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) –- Bruins defenseman Kevan Miller, who’ll turn 29 in November and will be in his fourth NHL season in 2016-17, wants to be a leader and mentor among the Bruins’ defense corps.

“I think that’s kind of the job of the older guys on any team. When one guy is successful they want to make sure they turn around and help the next guy in line,” Miller said during a conference call Tuesday.

Boston’s youthful players – defensemen, forwards and goaltenders – will be wise to listen to Miller’s tutelage in the near future. If they listen intently Miller can teach them how to turn a non-descript, below-average career as a depth player into multiple millions of dollars and the type of job security thousands would sacrifice their dignity for.

Felger: Bruins Re-Signing Kevan Miller ‘So Bad But So Predictable’

Miller signed a four-year contract worth $10 million with the Bruins on Tuesday. He will count against the cap at $2.50 million per season. That’s right, the U.S. hasn’t picked its next president yet, but the Bruins will have Miller under contract through the next commander-in-chief’s full first term.

In 2020 will Bruins fans be chanting “four more years, four more years”? Most already didn’t want Miller for four more minutes. Bruins general manager Don Sweeney, who is scheduled to address the media Wednesday morning, obviously cast his vote for more Miller.

Sweeney doesn’t have to explain his reasons for re-signing Miller because we’ve heard them all before, all the times former GM Peter Chiarelli re-signed a depth player early at market value or more. Sweeney did the same thing with Adam McQuaid last season before the market for defensemen dried up and the likes of Cody Franson and Christian Ehrhoff had to wait a while for their contracts and take less money than expected while McQuaid was under wraps for four more years at $2.75 million.

Here’s what Sweeney’s going to say:

Miller is a great guy in the room.

On the ice his strength and toughness make him a Bruins-type player that will help the Bruins be tough to play against.

If the Bruins let Miller get to unrestricted free agency there was a chance of losing the player and Miller getting the same amount of salary or more.

To the third item, the rational response would be: who cares? If Miller hit free agency and got better offers, the Bruins could bid him farewell. Just because there are other GMs lining up to overpay for grit and gumption and “compete level” and whatever other hockey catch phrases they’re throwing around on the GMs golf courses these days, that doesn’t mean the Bruins have to keep those other GMs from making a mistake.

Now why is it a mistake for the Bruins to be re-upping Miller at this stage of their organizational retooling? Well as much as the first two bullet points about Miller’s makeup are correct, he doesn’t fit Bruins’ stated plan to improve and actually make the playoffs for the first time since the end of the Jarome Iginla/Johnny Boychuk Era.

There are plenty of fifth and sixth defensemen making similar money to Miller. That doesn’t mean they’re not as overpaid as he is. Plus many of them are players who either had more upside when they signed their contracts or they’re on the other side of their prime. Miller is 28, he’s barely a bottom-pair defenseman, and he duplicates much of the talents the Bruins already have under contract in Adam McQuaid and Dennis Seidenberg.

For two playoff-less springs now Sweeney has talked about wanting to push the pace more and populate his defense corps with puck movers. Now he’s devoting $9.25 million to Miller, McQuaid and Seidenberg. Unless the Bruins have a side business producing youth potion or bionic knees and shoulders, having those three in the top six is never going to make the Bruins the team they claim they want to be.

If the decision to re-sign Miller for the amount and term they gave him wasn’t baffling enough, the timing of the new contract was odd. There was no rush. The Bruins are still in limbo as far as unrestricted free agent Loui Eriksson, they have to get something done with restricted free agent Torey Krug and claim they want to upgrade their defense (not to mention they might need to spend a little more on a backup goaltender this season). But then they devote valuable resources to a player of Kevan Miller’s ilk. Every quarter of a million counts when you’re in the position the Bruins are in. Third-pair defensemen can be had at a later date, maybe even once the season starts.

The play here was to let Miller hit the market. If he still fit their roster and salary-cap structure come mid-July or August, you can bring him back. Otherwise, there are plenty of defensemen in the NHL and AHL that could play Miller’s role (if you need another person to play that role) and do it for cheaper. With the Bruins trying to integrate youth into their lineup, they owed it to their prospects to give them a legitimate chance to make the lineup. They owed it to everyone to see what the trade and free agent market might bring them in terms of an upgrade. It’s unlikely anyone is going to trade for Miller if he becomes expendable within Boston’s plan. If Sweeney is worried his young guys won’t be ready this fall, there are cheaper ways to bring in competition and potential fill-ins for the start of the season.

Miller was asked about how he sees his role on the Bruins now that he’s earned a raise of nearly $2 million and has a contract that keeps him with the Bruins two years past the expiration of Zdeno Chara’s contract.

“I think my role has changed over the years and I’ve played in multiple roles, different circumstances throughout the season,” he said. “I’m looking forward to doing my job, whether it be shutting down another top line or being hard to play against, making plays out of my zone. I’m looking forward to that and I think that it’s obviously going to change year to year depending on who you have in your lineup.”

The Bruins’ roster may or may not go through a metamorphosis over the course of this summer. Miller’s role for now is as a living example of the Bruins once again outbidding themselves for pedestrian players and making it more difficult to make the major changes necessary to turn the franchise around.

Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.