Quoting: coga16
McDavid is the best player in the world, but MacKinnon is right there next to him and costs half as much.
Barely get better at Fwd
McDavid and MacKinnon aren't close.
Here's Mackinnon's career stats on his 23rd birthday:
374, 114-189-303 0.81 p/gp
McDavid doesn't turn 23 until January, at which time his projected stats are:
334, 154-291-445 1.33 p/gp
Not close. Now lets compare how each player has scored in the past 3.25 years - since the beginning of 2016-17:
McDavid: 262, 123-232-355 1.35 p/gp
MacKinnon: 256, 107-168-275 1.07 p/gp
Even Leon Draisaitl has done better: 262, 119-169-288 1.10 p/gp
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Clearly Makar is a better offensive talent than Nurse, but I highly doubt he'll continue scoring at his current pace all season. We still don't know exactly how good he'll be because he only has played 18 NHL games. At that age Nurse had played over 100 and we certainly didn't know what we had then.
And the contracts are only cheaper for the short term, over the long term Mack + Makar will be more expensive as I illustrated above: Makar will get more than Nurse in his next contract and MacKinnon will probably get a similar contract to McDavid in 3 years. McDavid is locked in for 8 at this rate, Nurse will likely get an 8-year deal next summer. All this isn't to say that the trade is fair, it's to say that Edmonton rejects the proposal. I guess you could say we reached the same conclusion but for different reasons.