I'm like 90% confident that MacKinnon is the guy driving things in Colorado, and has been since 2017. If you want to give credit to the "change of scenery", then Mack absolutely deserves some credit as one of the guys who had a big hand in building the scenery in Denver. Without Mack, they aren't a playoff team for the 2 years before Nuke arrives. Without him, maybe it's still Duchene's team. If the environment Mack helped build is what you're saying helped Nuke turn his career around, then I think that's more impressive than helping Neal score 25 more points but having zero lasting effect on his career.
And I'm not alluding to any personal trainer angle. I was joking about the stories of Mack forcing his teammates to eat chick pea pasta.
I do agree that Neal was still a pretty good player in Dallas. He improved from 37 his first year, to 55 his 2nd year, then was on a 54 point pace in his 3rd season before he got traded to Pittsburgh, but then only scored 6 points in 20 games to finish with 45 on the season. So, maybe some of his 26 point increase was just the natural progression that seems to happen after players hit ~200 games and are mostly adapted to NHL competition. And maybe he still would have been a 70 point player if he went to Flyers instead of the Pens. Before you try to argue these aren't true, please keep in mind that I have just as much evidence to prove these are true as you do to prove what you think explains Nuke's improvements, which you want me to accept as being true (aka none). It's just within the realm of possible explanations, so I can imagine it being plausible.
