George Burnett would like to be able to focus on the team he has and the team that he is building and one day, maybe not that very far off, he’ll be able to do that. But Burnett has worked in the major junior ranks for 20 years. He’s had all kinds of teams, all kinds of situations, but never like the one he was hired into this spring.

The details of the Flint Firebirds imbroglio last season have been detailed time and again. They are a matter of record even if they still seem to beggar belief. You have an owner, Rolf Nilsen, who meddled, who put not just his coach John Gruden in an impossible position but his own son, Hakon, as well. You had a team that walked out in protest when the coach was fired, a team that actually went into hiding like teenage runaways. You have to read the timeline again just to reassure yourself that it did actually happen.

HOW YOU’D CATEGORIZE Burnett’s role as Flint’s GM is up to you. Architect of the rebuild, maybe. Fixer, maybe. Stancher of the bleeding, controller of the damage, harsh but at least somewhat true. The latter seems to the point when Burnett says, “A lot of good things happened with this team last year.” You can be forgiven for thinking this is like taking satisfaction in not having to water the lawn after the hurricane hit.

And yet you don’t have to ask around much to find neutral observers to second the motion. “The one thing about a lot of the players [on last year’s team], most of them really, was that their effort was always there,” says one NHL scout based in Michigan. “You wouldn’t have held it against a kid if he wasn’t able to focus [on the game] every night. But for all the background noise, you had a bunch of players putting out, more than you’d have expected.”

Coming into the season many thought it was going to be dire times for the franchise. The Firebirds’ top young player last season, William Bitten, a Canadiens draft pick last June, let Burnett know that he wasn’t going to report and would sit out until traded. Not necessarily one of the first phone calls a new GM is looking to receive. Worse was the fact that Bitten’s request was at the very least influenced by Montreal management’s belief that he’d be best served playing in another organization.

Given that Burnett had the deal forced upon him and everyone in the loop knew as much, the yield for Bitten was neither surprising nor fair value for a player who had been an OHL first-rounder and 35-goal scorer in his draft year: Bitten plus a 12th-round pick in 2017 in exchange for goaltender Connor Hicks and defenceman Fedor Gordeev as well as second-round picks in 2019 and 2020.

It didn’t help the cause when, as punishment for the Flint ownership’s meddling last season, the OHL dropped the hammer on the club and pulled its first pick in the midget draft. Burnett wasn’t hired until after the draft so he didn’t have to grit his teeth while an elite prospect went by the boards, but still, he couldn’t be blamed if he feels like the league was piling on. And if you look at the big picture, while the OHL wanted to slap down the owner, those most immediately hurt by the loss of the first-rounder were the kids returning to the team.

A lot happened in Flint last year and Burnett had no choice but to make some things happen quickly, putting together a staff headed by coach Ryan Oulahen and trading his most valued skater just for starters. And the toughest and most urgent task ahead of Burnett is restoring confidence in the organization—for a couple of decades going back to the ’90s under Peter Karmanos’s ownership in Plymouth, the team had been one of the league’s most rock-solid, a choice destination. Burnett and the team can little afford top draft choices balking at reporting to Flint or have established players follow Bitten’s lead, demanding a trade. That there wasn’t wholesale flight rates is a win for Burnett and the club.

THE FIREBIRDS have five wins so far this year and asking them to compete for a playoff spot might be a big ask with a roster that includes nine players who are ’99 or double-naught birthdays. But to the surprise of many, two Firebirds rank in the OHL’s top five in scoring: centre Ryan Moore, a ’97 birthday who has nine goals and 20 points in nine games to lead the league; and left winger Nicholas Caamano who has 16 points across the same span. Moore hasn’t been drafted by a NHL team while Caamano was selected by Dallas in the fifth round in June.

And the Firebirds have stuff to work with. Said an NHL scout: “They’ve renovated the old arena so that it’s one of the league’s best facilities and all the players seemed to really like the area they lived in and the schools they attended. They did better with crowds than in Plymouth—not that they ever drew at all in Plymouth but still, when the fans came out they really were behind the team. Other than the stuff with the owner and the coach last season, the players actually liked a lot about the move.”

But though Burnett is reluctant to say as much, it might turn out that points earned and the standings this season won’t be the best measure of progress in Flint. The Firebirds are a young team—middleweights for now—in against Western Conference heavyweights, most notably Memorial Cup hosts Windsor, defending champions London, Sarnia and the Soo.

“What I learned along the way is that it’s all about patience and work,” Burnett says. “You shouldn’t try to make too many things happen too quickly.”

There’s still a team to manage on the ice but he likes the looks of things across the long haul. “We have to draft well but we’ve got a lot to work with,” Burnett says. “We had three second-rounders last season. Next spring we have three seconds and one other potentially as well as multiple thirds and fourths. We have multiple seconds through 2021.”

In other words, lots of picks to use to stock the lineup, lots of assets to use in deals when the Firebirds become contenders and buyers at the trade deadline in seasons hence.