Agreed. The International deals come for guys like McDavid regardless of what market they're in. You already have that ... he's in freaking Edmonton and has basically max exposure considering he's a hockey player. Could he make more on a local and regional level in a huge US or Canadian market? Sure. But hockey fans often forget just how niche a sport this really is. To truly max out his commercial value, Toronto is a little bit of a unicorn for hockey. It's a major international metropolitan area that prioritizes hockey as its primary sporting interest. As annoying as that is for everybody else in the NHL, they're really the only one that can say that. There are a million more people in Toronto than in Montreal or Calgary and Ontario has 7 million more people than Quebec. The Leafs' market is just insanely larger than any other market in the NHL, when it comes to numbers of people that actually give a crap about hockey.
So yeah, "best Canadian player in the world comes to market and gets tied to Toronto" might be annoying but it's also REALLY obviously logical. McDavid isn't Gretzky-level iconic off the ice, so he's not going to transcend and bleed out into the wider zeitgeist in a big US media market. The man has the personality of a turnip. If he wants to make off ice bank, then Toronto is an ATM for him in a way no other market would be. It's also like living in a fish bowl and the team may be cursed, so there's that.
