I'm amazed how Bowman is still highly rated as a prospect and got two serious votes here as a Top 5 prospect, yet Nash is a bust.
Bowman is the same age as Nash (two months older, actually) and in his second pro season and posted a stunning .58PPG. Nash had .41PPG. This is with Bowman having 11 powerplay points to Nash's 2, which likely indicates significantly more powerplay time. In terms of even strength points, Bowman had 19 in 51 games while Nash had 30 in 79.
That means that Nash, the bust, put up better even strength numbers than Bowman while being younger and in his first pro season.
So what makes Bowman so good? Is it that he is big and skates well? What else does he do? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
If Nash were to be given all the powerplay time that Bowman got, would he have scored less than the stunning .58PPG Bowman put up? If he played 23 games in the NHL, would he score fewer than one point?
I think the big issue here is that Nash was drafted by another team, and hasn't been obsessively followed and overrated by our fanbase for the last four years. If Bowman is drafted by the Oilers, we aren't going crazy over him scoring 3000 goals in juniors and thus we have no "potential" to fawn over, as 62 points over two AHL seasons and nonexistent production in the NHL doesn't give us much hope.
Nash >>>> Bowman and everyone else