Aquilini Window Shopped The Bills (craig adams)

craig adams

Aquilini Window Shopped The Bills

By GARTH'S CORNER

Aug 8, 2014 • 9:13 pm

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Updated

On Friday afternoon, Tim Graham of the Buffalo News reported that Terry Pegula isn't the only NHL owner to have expressed an interest in purchasing the NFL Buffalo Bills in the past couple of weeks.

Sources reveal the Aquilini family and John Bitove have gone deep enough into the process to at least have signed the Bills' nondisclosure agreement.

The Aquilini Investment Group owns the Vancouver Canucks. Francesco Aquilini is the chairman, with brothers Roberto Aquilini and Paolo Aquilini serving as alternate governors.

Bitove founded the Toronto Raptors and served as president of Toronto's 2008 Olympic bid. He is in the satellite radio and restaurant businesses. He owns hundreds of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchises across Canada.

It's unclear whether the Aquilinis or Bitove are scheduled to meet with the Bills' trust for face-to-face presentations that began Wednesday. A spokesperson for Bitove said he was traveling and unavailable to comment.

Word quickly stabbed westward t0o Vancouver where Aquilini acknowledged having an interest in the Bills. However, Aquilini was just kicking the tires.

Graham also identified a few of the previously unidentified bidders for the Buffalo Bills.

Bills Hall of Famer Jim Kelly and bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach reportedly met with the Bills' trust Thursday at the Wilson offices in the Detroit area.

Gundlach, from East Amherst, is CEO of DoubleLine Capital, a Los Angeles-based firm that oversees assets worth about $50 billion

Their heirs to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, Karen Pritzker and husband Michael Vlock, are said to have signed a nondisclosure agreement with the Wilson Trust. Forbes reported the Pritzker family features 11 billionaires.

The Bills' trust has discussed a sale with the Pritzker/Vlock group on some level, although it's unknown if the group signed the nondisclosure agreement necessary to move forward with the sales process.

Dean Metropoulos also signed a nondisclosure agreement.

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Pittsburgh Penguins' Swiss Army knife Craig Adams called out Sidney Crosby earlier this week. Adams, his wife and three kids gave Sid The Kid 24 hours to accept their ice bucket list challenge. Adams is doing a great thing by fundraising for ALS in the U.S. and Canada.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

ALS was first described in 1869 by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, but it wasn't until 1939 that Lou Gehrig brought national and international attention to the disease when he abruptly retired from baseball after being diagnosed with ALS. Most commonly, the disease strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. ALS has cut short the lives of other such notable and courageous individuals as Hall of Fame pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter, Senator Jacob Javits, actors Michael Zaslow and David Niven and others.

Good on Sidney for not only accepting The Adams Family's challenges, by aying it forward by calling out Pens teammates Pascal Dupuis, Marc Andre Fleury, and Kris Letang.

As for 87's wonky wrist. It looks fine to me.

Thanks, Pens TV

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Speaking of the Pens, they have high expectations for their newest offensive defenseman. The Sabres wrote a check, handed it to Ehrhoff, and pointed him to the open exit door. The Penguins lost veteran D Brooks Orpik and Matt Niskanen via free agency. Pens GM Jim Rutherford quickly fired a one-year, $4-million contract at Ehrhoff.

Low dollar contract. High dollar expectations for Ehrhoff.

Ehrhoff made an immediate impact with the Sabres in his first two seasons in Buffalo, however, the fan base soured on the German D when he appeared to be going through the motions after vets Ryan Miller, Steve Ott, Matt Moulson, and Thomas Vanek were traded away from Pegulaville. Rather than supporting Ted Nolan by grabbing the Buffalo youngsters by the collar and leading them, Ehrhoff regressed and kept to himself.

At age 32, Ehrhoff became the odd man out on the youthful Buffalo blue line which will include Tyler Myers, Mark Pysyk, Rasmus Ristolainen, Mike Weber, Andrej Maszaros, Andre Benoit, Nikita Zadorov, and Jake McCabe.

Out with the old. In with the new in Pegulaville.

Ehrhoff told NHL.com that he's impressed with his new teammates.

"For me, definitely, a puck-possession game is huge," Ehrhoff said. "I'm a player who likes to move the puck, get the puck to the forwards quick and tries to be involved in the offense too, and so it would definitely fit my style of play. … When you have [Sidney] Crosby and [Evgeni] Malkin on the team, it's pretty obvious you have two of the top players in the game, and especially at the center position it's huge to have two guys like that in the lineup.

"I think the supporting cast is very good too. To me, the defense still looks good too, so I think all around, we have a good lineup and Pittsburgh is always one of the names when you talk about teams that have a chance to win the Cup."

Rutherford told NHL.com that when he lost Orpik and Niskanen to the Washington Capitals, he zeroed in on Ehrhoff.

"We did have a little bit of concern about our defense. We were very fortunate to sign Christian Ehrhoff to fill that void that Niskanen and Orpik left when they went into free agency," Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford said. "We feel that our young defensemen can do the same job as a lot of these other defensemen that got signed. But the fact that we could sign a guy like Ehrhoff, that made a big difference.

"Ehrhoff is a player that can play in a lot of situations. … He's in great shape. He's a great team guy and he can really skate."

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Not gonna lie. I'm digging the passion and photo shopping skeels of @716Memes

I can't tell you who runs the Twitter feed at @716Memes. I think he's capturing the mood and the passion of the fan bases of the Bills and Sabres in Pegulavile.

Nicely, done.

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