In a development discovered by SB Nation Atlanta's very own Hawks editor Phil Foley, True North Sports and Entertainment registered their season ticket drive website on February 28th. If you look at the WhoIs registry, it very clearly shows the date that the site was registered. Interestingly enough, February 28th is just a scant twelve days after owner Michael Gearon Jr. told the AJC's Chris Vivlamore that there was a "sense of urgency" to find a local buyer for a team.
This raises questions, of course, regarding how much "good faith" the Atlanta Spirit Group was going to enter into any negotiations with local buyers. How much urgency by local parties would be taken into consideration when you had a group in Winnipeg already beginning to ponder their season ticket drive? Granted, yes, TNSE could have seen Gearon's interview and gone "sure, great, Thrash are on the market, let's just go on and get this started now." There's nothing wrong with that. However, there's also the possibility that the rumors putting TNSE in the picture as far back as 2009 are true. In that case, there could not have been any good faith discussions with prospective owners interested in keeping the team in Atlanta.
Of course, there's always the possibility that TNSE just assumed that the Coyotes would return to Winnipeg, and this'd be all for that team. In this convoluted situation, who knows?
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