I am confused, how will this help the Oilers when RNH is a better player then AA???

Athanasiou is better scorer than RNH, but RNH is better complete player. Along with that, Oilers would shed 3mil of salary cap and not get worse at position of need, they would get also 2nd rounder along with shedding salary cap by 3mil, which would help them sign other young player that would need extensions + it opens possibility of signing Nurse longterm.

That's just BS.

2016-17
RNH 82, 18-25-43
AA 64, 18-11-29

2017-18
RNH 62, 24-24-48
AA 71, 16-17-33

In addition, Nuge has had 3 seasons above 50 points, plays center well, and is only 1 year older than AA.

Edmonton declines without a second thought, the 2nd isn't enough to bridge the gap here. If you want to discuss Strome for Athanasiou, we'll listen. I don't see how this helps the Oilers (they won't have a 3C then), but it's more reasonable at least.

I was talking about scoring goals. Same goal amount in 16/17 and 8G difference in 17/18 while RNH playing with McD and AA playing with i guess Nielsen and Abdelkader/Helm.. AA could be legit 25-30goal guy with McD and half of the price.

Hard no RNH is far superior to AA

Still not accurate.
- RNH scored 8 goals in 300 minutes with McDavid, which pro-rates to 40 goals if they played together for 82 games.
- RNH scored 16 goals in 821 minutes withOUT McDavid, which pro-rates to 29 goals if he played away from McDavid for the whole season.
- AA's goal total pro-rated over 82 games is 18.

Also, AA scored 11 of his goals in the 544 minutes he played with Larkin (his most common linemate), without Larkin he scored just 5 goals in 543 minutes. He scored just 2 goals in 194 minutes with Nielson and 1 goal in 104 minutes with Zetterberg. These are not good numbers.

So, to recap, I'll put this in g/60 "all situations" for easier reading:

RNH with CMD: 1.60
RNH w/o CMD: 1.17

AA with Larkin: 1.21
AA w/o Larkin: 0.55

Now lets see what effect RNH and AA have on thier centers' goal scoring, using the same metric:

CMD with RNH: 1.40
CMD w/o RNH: 1.39

Larkin with AA: 0.44
Larkin w/o AA: 0.66

AA is actually a drag on Larkin, while RNH is as good for CMD's goal-scoring as any winger (including Draisaitl). If we look at points or 5v5 play we'd see that CMD's production goes THROUGH THE ROOF when he plays with Nugent-Hopkins.

Nugent-Hopkins and Athanasiou are not comparable players.

Conversations starts and ends here. 1000000% correct, AA is more of a comparable to Ryan Strome.