I just value hypercarry offensive drivers* more in terms of dedicated Cap spend. These are players that can transition the puck, create openings, pass, and shoot all on their own; they only need cheapo support for forechecking and pushing pucks to the right areas.
I think generating consistent offense is severely undervalued in a defense wins championships paradigm (moralization of defense), when scoring is usually <10% of a games recorded shot attempts.
Marner is a better overall player than Nylander, not by 3-4M but better nonetheless. Still, when either of them have dogwater games, they can still create one or two moments at critical times to break a game in the Leafs’ favour. The main difference is Marner tends to need someone else to also have such a moment at the same time, whereas Nylander (and a healthy Matthews to some degree) is agnostic to what his linemates are doing, so the likelihood of a breakthrough is in the favour of the soloist.
McDavid and MacKinnon have that solo takeover ability and the wherewithal to dictate the game due to their ability to layer puck control with their above average speed and processing ability. I think I’d like to save the heavy cap hits for that sort of ability going forward.