I was going through some stats earlier trying to figure out what was different when Toews was successful.
Three seasons in particular caught my eye — 2010-2011, 2011-2012, and 2013-2014. Those are three seasons where Toews was near a point per game player, and started in the offensive zone more than 60% of the time.
In the 10-11 season, he played with Kane and whatever big body on the LW. Toews scored 32 goals and 76 points that year. He took 412 offensive zone draws, and 260 in the defensive zone — a 61.63 offensive zone start percentage.
In 11-12, nearly 65% of his draws came in the offensive zone, and he was nearly a point per game player.
In 13-14, nearly 64% of his draws came in the offensive zone, and he put up 68 points.
That season was the last time Toews would have an offensive zone start percentage above 60%, and was the last time he’d see fewer than 300 defensive zone starts. His offensive production also trended downward over the next four seasons.
While he still put up good numbers in the 14-15 season despite a ~56% offensive zone start, and taking more than 300 defensive zone draws for the first time in his career, he did it with future HOFer Marian Hossa. This was the last season Toews took more than 400 offensive zone draws.
This past season, Toews inched close t0 the 400 offensive zone draw mark, but also took the most defensive zone starts of his career — and that added up to a ~55% offensive zone start mark, and his worst offensive production to date.
TL;DR
With the exceptions of an anomaly post-lockout season and Hossa’s last monster season — Toews has played his best hockey getting 400 or more offensive zone starts, getting less than 300 defensive zone starts, and seeing ZS% of 60% or higher. He hasn’t been put in that situation since the 2013-2014 season, the same year his offensive output seemingly peaked.
As far as your numbers, context would be good relative to the team around him.
For example, in 2014, literally the only line under 50% OZS was the 4th line. Kruger, Nordstrom, Smith and Bollig had under 20%.
FOURTEEN forwards had OZ Start percentages over 60% according to naturalstattrick, with Kane peaking among regulars at 69.61%. That is insane. Toews had only the
7th highest OZ S% on the team among regular forwards. For the 7th highest OZS% forward on the team to be over 60 is crazy.
The simple fact is that team was in the Ozone ALL THE TIME. Toews may have had under 300 Dzone starts, he still had the 5th most among forwards (and 2nd for centers) after the 4th line and Sharp (who played more games than both Hossa and Toews that season). Basically, you had the 4th line taking the most Dzone starts, and then the Toews line up next for Dzone workload.
Just like every other season since 2013.
So yeah, if you have that team, then Toews is going to get a lot of ozone starts to go with his lots of neutral zone starts, and his lots of dzone starts.
Plus (for the benefit of certain people), Toews, Hossa and Sharp led all forwards in TOI.QoC (Dmen), CF.QoC (possession) and xGF.QoC (scoring chances) in 2014. So while their deployment time skewed toward the ozone along with the rest of the team, they were the ones hopping over the boards against the other team's best every night, and the guys that the other team's best hopped over to face every night on the road. His ZSR and OZF% (depending on which site you like to go to, they're basically the same) went up, but his job didn't change. He rose with a high tide, just like everybody on that roster.
As far as the 2011 and 2012 seasons, when the team had basically zero depth and were going with a glass cannon approach of trying to win every game 6-5 by loading up their best players on one line, yeah, Toews saw his ZSR rise to about the level that Kane usually sees and has seen since. While that may have been a successful time for Toews personal score-card, the team as a whole was not a particularly dangerous or effective one, there's a reason the team dropped it ASAP when they accrued the depth necessary to let him do what he does best.
If the Blackhawks want more points from Toews (assuming his sh% doesn't rebound) above anything else, then yeah, you should put him in more offensively oriented positions. The question is CAN you? Do you have enough depth that can handle the matchup role and increased Dzone start share he would then be giving up? Lord knows he's not going to get much support from the D. This is where the lack of a Kruger type hurts, if we had somebody to go full human shield in the Dzone and flip the ice, then you could afford Toews more Ozone starts.
Is the goal to win games, or to juice Toews offensive numbers? You build a deep enough team, you can probably manage both (and then some), but until then, he's stuck carrying the load with tougher minutes against tougher competition, while getting older and carrying a lot of tough miles.
One last thing, and please take this as the incredibly minor nit-pick it is, but Offensive Zone Faceoff % (naturalstattrick) and ZSR (corsica.hockey) are the proper names of stats, with their own operational definitions. But saying 'Toews started 65% of his shifts in the ozone' is factually inaccurate, because both stats leave out Neutral Zone Starts. So in 2011-2012, 65% of his draws did not take place in the offensive zone. Of his 792 FOs, 391 (49%) took place in the Ozone.