It is a fairly long list of professionals that have made this statement but none of them know what they are talking about, or so we are told. If you review this entire thread there has only been 2 quantifiable reasons with merit given for Matthews to never be comparable to McDavid.
McDavid's speed and his ability to play at that speed (which is easily the best)
McDavid's .23 points a game advantage as a rookie (granted he has a small sample size which would be a 19 point lead over a full season)
Both sound reasons to suggest McDavid is significantly better, as a rookie.
Other reasons we have been given are:
Line mates: Hyman and Nylander/Brown are greater than Lucic and Eberle, dubious at best
Hockey IQ: Subjective, unquantifiable and so holding little value as a comparison
An imaginary ceiling Matthews has: This one is ridiculous because it is again subjective and impossible to know
He is better at every aspect of the game: This of course ignores Matthews physical advantages, boards, corners, traffic, goal scoring, take aways etc.
Matthews was sheltered: The stats I have seen suggest this was true at the start of the season and became less so as the season progressed. It was absolutely not true in the playoffs.
So we have two real reasons.
1. Play at high speed never seen before.
2. Superior rookie numbers.
The first reason is very compelling, we have never seen a player with his speed and his ability to exploit that speed. The flaw with this argument though is it assumes there is only one way to be generational/or the best player in the game despite the entire history of the game suggesting the greats had a wide range of styles and skills though all share a rare ability to see the game (except maybe Lindros?). Again though this is something difficult to measure without hind sight.
The second assumes that progression has a formula required to be generational or to one day be the best. It assumes an arbitrary ppg rookie number that McDavid hit and Matthews did not in order to be a generational talent. However I am fairly certain if we said Draisaitl could not be as good as player X because of an inferior rookie season Oiler fans would laugh at us.
So anyone who is objective cannot say with certainty that Matthews is not generational or that he could never rival McDavid, there simply has been no case to support this.
We can look at the players who entered the league with McDavid's rookie point per game and say everyone else who was comparable was a special player, this is undeniable. We can also look at players like Martin St Louis and say that claiming to know someone's ceiling at such a young age is sheer stupidity.
So what we can conclude is McDavid is a vastly superior player as of this moment. That Matthews will have to make significant strides to close that gap and that the odds are against him. We can also conclude when looking at Matthew's rookie season when put into the context of age and position, that it was a remarkable achievement, it becomes even more so when scoring by era is factored in.
In conclusion, those stating Matthews is equal to or better than McDavid at this moment are not being objective. The same can also be said for those who claim he could never rival McDavid or be generational. He could (just as Eichel could) but he has a hell of a lot to prove before we can say either.
There really is no other reasonable conclusion.
