The sales pitch is being the biggest star on the biggest team in the biggest market with a pay cheque to match - - and he's in the driver seat in a championship pursuit.
"All we can give you us... everything."
Auston is the biggest star on the Leafs and basically almost every team in the League if he were on another team.
Toronto is essentially asking Auston, pick us and carry us to a championship on your back and take the drivers seat, He isn't joining a championship team, he is making them a championship team by his presence.
You're also not selling him on Patriotism here, as this is Canada biggest team in Canada's biggest market so does that mean the same to Auston an American born in California and raised in Arizona, living in his home country in the off-season, about being a Canadian legend as it would if you gave that speech to Dougie Gilmour. Darryl Sittler or Wendel Clark or even John Tavares?
Wouldn't he be just as big a star if he won a championship in LA or Chicago or NY?
I could even see teams south of the border, saying come home Auston and become that National hero in your own country as one of America's greatest homegrown talents and best American players of all time and be that role model to grow the sport in USA for young kids. You would have to think part of Johnny Hockey and Matthew Tkachuk reasons for leaving the teams that drafted them in Canada and returning home to their own countries to start families and raise kids has to be related to place of birth in some form and reasoning. Would anyone blame him if he followed their lead?
Auston's career at present forces him to work in a foreign country and live only in Toronto during hockey season, but he set up base and lives in the States close to friends and family when on his own time. When he has choice to pick as a UFA and was his short term deal that takes him to this choice early a part of his last contract thoughts. If you wanted to be a lifetime Leaf then why 5 years and not 8 originally?
The money will make him the highest paid in the league on any team he picks as their offers would put him in that class and even higher than Toronto to lure him away and perhaps for better tax brackets and warmer climates and his preferred lifestyle.
Toronto is asking for loyalty from AM because of being the team that drafted him and has treated and paid him extremely well and is now hoping he stays and completes the task of bringing a Cup.
Just some things to think about and time will tell how his all works out and lets hope for some playoff success in the next 2 years to make his choice harder of leaving a Cup competitive team if winning is a priority of his also.
