i should preface this by saying i'm not being combative - what underlying statistics can we use to show the effectiveness of wingers helping exit the zone. it 'seems' to me last year toronto's wingers were very inconsistent at being effective high relay options getting the puck out outside of marner/hyman.... his rookie year he had responsible guys like JVR, Komarov, Martin willing to stay and help.. hell even Ben Smith and Soshnikov made the effort to get our first then move up.. it was a big shift to the kids.
My only argument here is he does this at a much lower rate than the rest of his defensive teammates while they still have the same wingers. Quite a few of the defensemen on the roster were solid at getting out in a controlled manner but Zaitsev was not. Based on the data I have, here are the controlled exits (pass or carry) and fails from the Leafs d last year:
Rielly has a controlled exit 37% of the time and fails 14.5% of the time
Gardiner has a controlled exit 33% of the time and fails 14% of the time
Dermott has a controlled exit 42% of the time and fails 15% of the time
Hainsey has a controlled exit 26% of the time and fails 24% of the time
Zaitsev has a controlled exit 19% of the time and fails 24% of the time
I don't have the data with Muzzin in Toronto but if you're failing more often than you have controlled exits, there's likely an issue with that particular player. He doesn't fit the long pass breakout and maybe they'll run more of a 5-man breakout in Ottawa which will help with this but it's obvious that he's pretty far behind the curve compared to his teammates in this respect.
Edit: If someone has a zone exit/entry data resource for last year's data that they could point me to or send to me that would be greatly appreciated. This is a tough one to find a large data sample from last year based on what I'm finding.