Zach Parise may be considering a lot of things as he looks to choose the team he'll play for next season, but money isn't one of them.

Parise, an unrestricted free agent who is believed to be choosing between the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Minnesota Wild, the Detroit Red Wings and the New Jersey Devils team he captained to the Stanley Cup Finals this spring, spoke to Wild beat writer Michael Russo of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on Tuesday at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and said that finances are not an issue when it comes to his decision.

"Parise has no timetable," Russo reported on his Twitter account (@Russostrib). "Says is 'so much more than the money. That plays a very small part in it.'"

The update isn't exactly news, since it stands to reason that the offers he's considering are likely to be roughly equivalent (although uncertainty over the Devils' financial situation may impact their offer). Regardless, Parise will be very well compensated wherever he goes. The question, then, is what each of his suitors offers him.

In Pittsburgh, the attraction is clear. A team that won the Stanley Cup in 2009 still has the majority of its key pieces intact, although Jordan Staal was traded last month to the Carolina Hurricanes for a package headlined by Brandon Sutter. Parise, who scored 45 goals and 94 points in the year Pittsburgh won the cup, could easily be a 100-point player if he played alongside Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh (although Crosby might be a more natural fit given their shared roots at Shattuck-St. Mary's prep school in Minnesota).  With Parise, Crosby, Malkin and James Neal leading the Penguins, the likelihood of the Stanley Cup's return to Pittsburgh would be high.

On the other hand, if he went to Pittsburgh, Parise wouldn't be "The Man." For all intents and purposes, the Penguins are Sidney Crosby's team. That doesn't mean that Parise wouldn't be a star in Pittsburgh, just like Hart Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury are stars there. What it does mean, however, is that the opportunity to be a leader - as he has been in New Jersey, where he wears the captain's C - would be severely diminished. To a lesser extent, that's going to be true in Detroit, where Henrik Zetterberg is a likely candidate to replace the retired Nicklas Lidstrom as captain, but Parise could certainly have his opportunity eventually to lead.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, Parise might not supplant Mikko Koivu as the Wild's captain, but with a Minneapolis-born All-Star returning to the Twin Cities, he would easily become the team's biggest star, and on home turf, besides.

Still, New Jersey is also home turf. The Devils are the franchise that saw Parise falling down the draft board in 2003 and quickly made a trade to snap him up. They're the team that brought his older brother into the organization in 2006, and they're the team that made him captain this past fall. As a professional hockey player, Zach Parise has done more than play for the Devils for the past seven seasons. He's called New Jersey home.

The question now, though, is whether his hockey home will win out over his boyhood home, or whether an elite franchise like the Penguins or Red Wings will entice him to make a new one.

With the different options available to Parise, and all the plusses and minuses, it's hardly a surprise that his decision wasn't instant. As for what's most important to Parise, it seems that he doesn't know that himself yet.